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The World We Live In 


An Introduction to the Social Studies 
for the Intermediate Grades 

BY 

LOUIS WEINBERG 

Townsend Harris High School, College of the City of New York 

ZENOS E. SCOTT 

Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Massachusetts 

EVELYN T. HOLSTON 

Supervisor, Elementary Education, Springfield, Massachusetts 


EXPERIMENTAL EDITION 
NOT FOR SALE 


D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 


BOSTON NEW YORK 

ATIANTA 


CHICAGO 

DALLAS 


SAN FRANCISCO 
LONDON 















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The World We Live In 

An Introduction to the Social Studies 
for the Intermediate Grades 


BY 

LOUIS ^yUINBERG 

Townsend Harris High School, College of the City of New York 

ZENOS E. SCOTT 

Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Massachusetts 

EVELYN T. HOLSTON 

Supervisor, Elementary Education, Springfield, Massachusetts 


EXPERIMENTAL EDITION 
NOT FOR SALE 


D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK 
SAN FRANCISCO 
LONDON 


BOSTON 

ATLANTA 


CHICAGO 

DALLAS 






Copyright, 1931 
By 

Louis Weinberg 
Zenos E. Scott 
Evelyn T. Holston 


No part of the material covered by this 
copyright may be reproduced in any form 
without written permission of the publisher. 

311 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

OCT -B 1331 

©CU' 43099 





Foreword to the Teacher 

For some years there has been a definite demand from 
teachers of the fourth and fifth grades for a book which would 
serve as an adequate introduction to geography. The World 
We Live In has been planned to fill this need. It has been 
planned, furthermore, with the conviction that an introductory 
study of geography takes on added meaning when the history 
of man's control of the geographic environment and the civic 
aspects of man’s cooperation in the control of nature are fused 
with geography. 

A study of the table of contents will reveal the outline of 
this plan and will show how the authors have met the problem 
of correlating geography, history, and civics in such a manner 
as to give to this book the character of an elementary intro¬ 
duction to the social studies. 

However divided educators may be in their opinions as to 
the desirability or practicability of merging history, geography, 
and civics in the junior-high-school grades, there can be no 
difference of opinion as to the absolute necessity of presenting 
to the younger pupils of the intermediate grades an introduc¬ 
tory and integrated picture of the world in which they live, 
through which they can learn (1) to appreciate the earth as 
man’s home, (2) to understand man’s life on earth as a pro¬ 
gressive experience in the control of nature, and (3) to become 
familiar with man’s ways of living and working together as a 
progressive growth in the art of human cooperation. 

Each chapter in this book, even when it deals with apparently 
new material, is built around a core of pupil experience. The 

iii 


IV 


FOREWORD TO THE TEACHER 


teacher can make special application of the chapter content to 
the pupil’s own environment and thus make the book function 
as a study of home geography as well as of local community 
life and local history. Of course, in the very nature of things, 
not all that is peculiarly local in pupil experience can be in¬ 
troduced into a text; on the contrary, the application of textual 
material to the further organization and interpretation of the 
immediate environmental experiences of children must remain 
the most interesting and most fruitful contribution of the 
intelligent teacher. 

Teachers interested in the development of constructive imagi¬ 
nation, in the creative aspects of teaching, will find particularly 
useful the illustrations, which have been especially prepared as 
visualizations of the facts and principles set forth in this text. 
There are teaching values in line drawings, when intelligently 
designed as teaching instruments, which photographs, as such, 
cannot possibly match. Certain of the illustrations, such as 
“The Eskimo Summer Tent,” “Eskimo Tools,” “American 
Indians Gathering Rice,” and “Plains Indian Tepee,” are 
drawn directly from models in the American Museum of Nat¬ 
ural History. The picture of the Pueblo Indian houses is 
from a model in the Museum of the American Indian. Such 
illustrations make possible the classroom study of valuable 
museum material; they bring the museum, in part, into the 
classroom. All the pictures set basic functioning concepts 
before the pupil in the form of concrete visual images. Many 
of them, especially those of a diagrammatically cartoon nature, 
organize for the pupil a mass of related concepts. A consider¬ 
able number of the pictures can be discussed in the class for 
their geographic implications, their evidence of man’s control 
of nature, and their testimony as to man’s cooperation in the 
control of nature. From the point of view of creative learning. 




FOREWORD TO THE TEACHER 


V 


pupils can be encouraged themselves to create additional 
visualizations of the text; the pictures in the book then serve 
to provide either the raw material or the models for such visual¬ 
izations (as in the case of the diagrammatic cartoons). 

It is the hope of the authors that teachers and pupils will find 
both pleasure and profit from their joint work in the use of this 
book. 


The Authors 





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A Word from the Authors to the Children Who 
Are Reading The World We Live In 

We are living in a wonderful world. 

Through the ages, men have been struggling to make this 
world of ours an easier and pleasanter place in which to live. 

Man once lived on wild plants for food. He had no fire and 
no utensils with which to cook. There were many wild ani¬ 
mals which were his enemies, and he had no weapons. His 
clothing was made of the skins of animals, for he had no tools 
and no skill with which to make clothes. At night he lived in 
darkness, for there was no light. 

But in this world there were many natural resources, and 
man had a brain and a pair of hands. With his inventive 
mind he has been able to accomplish all that you will read 
about in this book. You will understand, as you read, how 
men and women working together have used the resources of 
nature to change the world into the kind of place you boys 
and girls are living in today. 

This story of man’s struggle, of his successes and failures, is 
called history. The story of the places in the world where these 
struggles occur is called geography. The story of how men 
have learned to live and work together is often spoken of by 
your older brothers and sisters as civics. 

You will find all three stories in this book, and- you can 
appreciate how geography, history, and civics are all parts of 
the same story if you will read the book carefully and talk 
about it with your teacher and your classmates. 

The Authors 






CONTENTS 


CHAPTER page 

PART I 

A BIRD^S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 

1. Around the World by Airplane. 3 

2. The Path of the Fliers. 9 

PART II 

WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 

3. Why the World Works.17 

4. The Earth as a Storehouse.23 

5. The Earth as a Workshop.32 

6. When the Whole World Was a Wilderness... 45 

7. How Man Conquered the Wilderness .... 49 

8. The Nations of the Earth.57 

PART III 

FEEDING THE WORLD 

9. Why We Need Food.63 

10. How We Get Our Meat. .69 

11. Milk, Cream, Butter, and Cheese.76 

12. Poultry and Eggs.83 

13. Food from the Sea.88 

14. Wheat and Other Grains.94 

15. A Basket of Plant Foods.103 

16. Water and Salt ..HI 

ix 
















X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

PART IV 

CLOTHING THE WORLD 

17. The Clothes We Wear . 123 

18. Clothing from Animals: Furs and Leather 128 

19. Clothing from Animals: Wool and Silk . . 136 

20. Clothing from Plants: Cotton, Linen, Rubber . 147 

PART V 

HOMES THE WORLD OVER 

21. The Story of the House . 159 

. 22. Materials for Building the House.166 

23. Furnishing the Home . 181 

PART VI 

BINDING THE WORLD: 

TRANSPORTA TION—COMMUNICA TION 

24. Carrying and Being Carried . 189 

25. Buying and Selling: The Story of Trade . . . 200 

26. Sending Messages: The Spoken Word, The 

Written Word, The Printed Word .... 209 

27. Sending Messages: Telegraph, Cable, Telephone, 

Wireless, Radio . 215 

PART VII 

TOOLS THAT HELP IN THE WORLHS WORK 

28. How Man Uses Tools to Increase His Power . 223 

29. Copper, Iron, Steel, Coal, and Oil Make Tools 

Possible.231 

30. Books as Tools . . . ;.248 











PART I 

A BIRD^S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 

CHAPTER 

1. Around the World by Airplane 

2. The Path of the Fliers 


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Chapter 1 

AROUND THE WORLD BY AIRPLANE 

Long ago some one wrote a story about a magic carpet 
which could fly through the air and carry people to any place 
in the world. Since that time, many boys and girls have 
wished that the story were true and that they, too, could see 
the world from a magic carpet. 

Today the story of the magic carpet has come true. Men 
do go flying through the air. They fly, not on make-believe 
magic carpets, but in airplanes. 

One day in May, in the year 1924, eight Americans in four 
airplanes set out to fly all the way around the world. Less 
than six months later, after many adventures, two of the 
planes completed the trip. 

In their journey the airplanes flew over many lands and 
many waters. There were stormy days when the men flew 
through rain, fog, sleet, and snow which sometimes made it 

3 








4 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 


impossible for them to see the earth below them; but there 
were clear days, too, when they could see for miles and miles 
in all directions. 

Looking Down on Lands and Waters 

Looking down from their planes, the fliers saw a goodly 
portion of the world in which we live, with its oceans and 
mountains, its rivers and valleys and plains, its farms, 
pastures, villages, towns, and cities. 

For part of their trip the airplanes flew over oceans where 
waves rolled on and on for thousands of miles. Every now 
and then the fliers could see a sailboat or a steamboat push¬ 
ing its way through the waters. 

Whenever the planes were flying over an ocean, the airmen 
were eager to reach their next landing place as quickly as 
possible. Oceans are dangerous for airplanes. 

To make the ocean flights less dangerous, the planes were 
built so that they would float in case of accidents over the 
sea. As things turned out, this was a wise precaution. One 
of the planes, finding itself in trouble, did have to drop into 
the ocean. It floated for four hours before passing ships 
came to the rescue. The men were saved, but the pounding 
waves destroyed the plane. 

In flying over land, the airmen found the crossing of the 
wild mountain country the most dangerous part of their 
task. 

As they came near the mountain country, the men first 
saw low hills rising a few hundred feet or more from the 





AROUND THE WORLD BY AIRPLANE 5 


earth. Then behind the hills they saw mountains rising 
thousands of feet into the air. To the fliers these mountains 
were like walls blocking their path. 

As the planes rose to fly over the mountains, the men could 
see dark forests growing on the mountain sides. Looking 
down on the tops of the higher mountains, they could see 



snow and ice. On those frozen peaks, neither plants nor 
animals can live. An accident while flying over the moun¬ 
tains might prove at least as dangerous as engine trouble 
over an ocean. 

One day while flying through clouds and mist, one of the 
planes struck a mountain side and was destroyed. What 
happened to the men we shall read in a later chapter. 

There were times when the men flew for hours over plains 
where the earth is level for hundreds of miles. Looking 
through their held glasses, they could see that these plains 

















6 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 



Looking Down on Lands and Waters 


are not all alike. Some of these plains are farming lands; 
some are pasture lands; and some are plains of sand called 
deserts. 



















AROUND THE WORLD BY AIRPLANE 7 


Looking down on the farming lands, the fliers saw growing 
crops of grain, fruits, and vegetables. On the pasture lands 
the fliers saw cattle and sheep grazing on the wild grass. 
On the deserts the fliers saw few plants growing and no 
animals grazing. 

In the course of their flight the fliers looked down on many 
a valley where the earth seemed like a great basin between 
hills and mountains. Rivers flow in these valleys. Branch 
rivers flow into the great rivers. These branch rivers are 
formed from the rain and snow which fall on the hills and 
mountains. 

Some of the river valleys were busy places. Back from 
the banks of the rivers, the fliers could see farmhouses and 
the fields in which the farmers raise their crops. Along the 
river banks they could see small villages where a few hundred 
people live in houses built close together. They could see 
towns where a few thousand people dwell. Here and there 
in these valleys the fliers looked down on cities where many 
thousands of people make their homes. From above, the 
city buildings appeared like tall blocks set in rows. 

Not all the cities were in river valleys. The airmen saw 
cities built on the shores of large bodies of inland water. 
These bodies of water look like oceans, only they are smaller 
and are called lakes. The men saw cities rising straight up 
above riverless, treeless plains. Even in the heart of wild 
mountain country they occasionally saw a city. 




8 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 


Home Again 

When the fliers, coming home from their long trip, saw 
the cities of their own United States again, they were happy. 
When they landed they were hailed with joy. The people 
were proud of the fliers and were glad to welcome them home 
again. 





Chapter 2 

THE PATH OF THE FLIERS 

In their trip around the world the fliers journeyed 27,534 
miles. The flight took them 5 months and 22 days. But 
the real flying time was only 351 hours and 11 minutes, or 
14 days, 15 hours, and 11 minutes. 

The airmen flew by day. At night they landed to rest. 
Often on account of poor weather conditions or engine 
trouble they had to stay where they landed for a day, a 
week, or even longer. Then, when they were ready, they 
rose into the air and flew on. 

The Flight Begins in Seattle 

The men started from the city of Seattle on the Pacific 
coast of the United States. 

They first flew north. If you wish to know which way is 
north, stand at noon with your back to the sun. Stretch 
your arms out sidewise. The south will be behind you, your 
right arm will be pointing to the east, your left arm to the 
west, and you will be facing the north. 

The fliers had an easier way of knowing direction. Wher¬ 
ever they were and at any time of night or day, they could 
tell north, south, east, and west by looking at a compass. 
A compass has a needle which points towards the north. 

North, south, east, and west are all marked on the compass. 

9 


10 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 


The fliers were also guided by maps, or drawings of the 
earth, which showed them the shapes of the different lands 
and waters of the world. Their maps showed them where 
each place is; whether it is north or south or east or west of 



some other place. Have you ever taken a long ride in an 
automobile to some place where you have never been before? 
Do you remember your father taking a map out of his pocket 
to And which way to go? 

Looking at their maps these fliers saw that Alaska, the 
first place which they wished to reach, lies toward the north. 
Then they looked at their compasses and flew northward. 











THE PATH OF THE FLIERS 


11 


The fliers left Seattle in May, when it was almost summer 
there. When they reached Alaska a few days later, they 
found the weather cold. There are parts of Alaska where it 
is cold almost all the year round. 

The fliers found sudden changes in weather throughout 
their journey. Whenever they flew far up into the north 
countries, they found the climate cold. When they flew 
south again, they found the climate warmer. But we are 
getting ahead of our story. 

Across the Pacific Ocean 

Leaving Alaska, the fleet of airplanes turned westward to 
cross the Pacific Ocean. It was here, only a short distance 
from the mainland, that one of the planes was wrecked by 
flying against a mountain side. This happened on one of 
the Aleutian Islands, off the coast of Alaska. The three 
remaining planes continued on their westward flight. 

The wind over the Pacific was fierce and chill, and the 
fliers were glad when they came to islands in the ocean upon 
which they could land and find shelter. On one of the islands 
of Japan, school children celebrated the landing of the fliers 
by singing songs to them from a hillside. Journeying on 
beyond Japan, the men reached the mainland of the great 
continent called Asia. 

Over Asia and Europe 

To cross Asia, the airmen flew southward over China, the 
home of the Chinese. They flew over India, the home of the 




12 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 


Hindus. They flew over Persia, Arabia, and Turkey. They 
stopped for a while in each of these countries. 

In India, which is much farther south than Alaska, the 
men found the sun hot, and they feared that the terrific 
heat might damage their engines. The planes therefore 
carried as little load as possible, so that the overheated 
engines need not work too hard. Even so, one motor did 
give out, and the men had to get a new one to carry them 
on. 

About the middle of July the fliers reached the continent 
of Europe, where they flew over Austria, France, England, 
and Scotland. 

Leaving Scotland, they undertook to cross the Atlantic 
Ocean in three hops. Their first hop was to carry them to 
the island of Iceland. Their second hop was to land them 
on the island of Greenland. 

In these northern islands winters are long and cold, just 
as they are in northern Alaska. Floating about in the ocean 
near Iceland and Greenland, there are ice floes and icebergs. 
The ice floes are floating cakes of ice. The icebergs are 
floating mountains of ice. Some icebergs are thousands of 
feet long and hundreds of feet high. 

In the first chapter we read how one of the planes dropped 
into the ocean and was wrecked. This happened on the 
way to Iceland. 

When the two remaining planes were flying from Iceland 
to Greenland, there was a heavy fog over the ocean, and the 
planes, which had to fly low, were in danger of crashing into 




THE PATH OF THE FLIERS 


13 


icebergs. Fortunately there was no such collision. The two 
planes reached Greenland safely. 

Back to America 

From Greenland the fliers made their third hop across the 
Atlantic Ocean, this time reaching Canada on the continent 
of North America. Now the planes were near home. 

From Canada the fliers turned their planes southward to 
the city of Boston on the Atlantic coast of the United States. 
From Boston they flew still farther south, landing first in 
New York City and then in the city of Washington in the 
District of Columbia. Here the President of the United 
States and the members of Congress came out to the landing 
field to greet the world fliers as they arrived. 

From the city of Washington the planes flew across the 
United States. They stopped at many cities along the way, 
and at last they reached Seattle, the city from which they 
had started. 

So the fliers completed their journey. It was the first 
time that men had succeeded in flying around the world. 

Since this first round-the-world flight, other aircraft have 
flown around the world. The latest flying machines have 
grown so much safer that today they are used in ordinary 
traveling. It may well be that many of you who read this 
book will some day see much of this earth of ours from air¬ 
planes. 

In Chapter 24 you will read more about airships, dirigibles, 
and the airports of today. 




14 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD 


Things to Do 

1. Can you find Alaska on the map of North America? 

2. Can you find it on the map of the world? 

3. Can you find it on your globe? 

4. Trace the route of these airmen from Alaska to Asia. 
Can you find Japan, India, Turkey, Persia, and Arabia on the 
map of the world? 

5. Can you find Austria, France, England, and Scotland? 

6. Trace on your map of the world their route from Scotland 
to Canada; mark the places where they stopped before reaching 
Canada. 

7. Now perhaps you can trace the entire journey of these 
airmen, marking on your maps all the places over which they 
flew. 

8. In this chapter you must have learned many new words 
and phrases. Tell the meaning of each of these words and 
phrases: 

collision grazing mountain 

iceberg Eskimo river 

compass ocean lake 

field glass island desert 




PART II 


WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 

CHAPTER 

3. Why the World Works 

4. The Earth as a Storehouse 

5. The Earth as a Workshop 

6. When the Whole World Was a Wilderness 

7. How Man Conquered the Wilderness 

8. The Nations of the Earth 




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Chapter 3 

WHY THE WORLD WORKS 

You read in the last chapter of a famous flight around 
the world. You remember that the airmen passed over 
farms where farmers were busy raising foods. They saw 
grassy plains where cattle and sheep were grazing. They 
passed over cities where factories with smoking furnaces 
were busy making many things. They passed over rivers 
and oceans where boats were carrying people and cargoes of 
goods to many parts of the world. 

All the world was busy working. 

What Are Our Needs 

At all times, all over the world, people work. On farming 
lands farmers are busy in their fields. On pasture lands men 
are raising sheep and cattle. In forests on the sides of 
mountains men are cutting down trees or hunting wild 
animals. In city mills and factories men are making things. 
In city stores and offices they are busy buying and selling. 
Men are working on trains which cross the lands. On 
ships at sea, on airplanes high up in the air, even in mines 
under the earth, men are working. All over the world 
women are working, too. In homes and schools, on farms, 

in stores and factories and offices, women work. 

17 


18 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


Why must men and women work? Of course, we know 
that people must make a living. But what are the things 
which people need so that they can live? 

We should soon learn what our real needs are if we found 
ourselves wrecked in a wilderness as two of the fliers were. 
You remember that one of the planes was destroyed by strik¬ 
ing against a mountain on a desolate island near Alaska. 
For the fliers to have stayed where their plane was wrecked 
would have meant certain death; so they set out in search 
of help. 


The Needs of the Wrecked Airmen 

As the men pushed through the lonely wilderness, what did 
they need? They needed food. Food satisfied their hunger 
and kept up their strength. So each day they ate sparingly 
of their small supply and wondered what they should do if 
they did not find help before the last of their food was gone. 

The fliers needed clothing. Their warm clothing pro¬ 
tected them from cold and snow. 

The fliers needed shelter. At the end of each day they had 
to seek a place where they could sleep protected from bad 
weather and wild animals. 

Food, clothes, shelter — these three things the fliers 
needed. But these were not all their needs. To obtain food, 
clothes, and shelter, they needed other things. 

The airmen needed some means of transportation, or, in 
other words, some way of carrying things from place to 
place. As long as their backs would bear up under their 




WHY THE WORLD WORKS 


19 


loads, their own bodies were a means of transportation. But 
if these fliers had had a dog team and a sled, they could 
have covered ground more swiftly. 

The fliers needed some means of communication, or, in 
other words, some way of sending messages. When people 
in the same room talk to one another they are communicating, 
or sending messages, but the messages travel only a few feet. 
There are times when we need to send messages for many 
miles. The airmen knew that if only they could let people 
know what had happened, a rescue party would be sent to 
their aid. 

Meanwhile, the people of the United States were reading 
the papers anxiously and wondering what fate had befallen 
the two airmen. A week passed; then the eighth day, the 
ninth day, and still no word. Every one feared that the 
men had died. 

But on the tenth day the men reached a United States 
fort where there was a radio station from which they sent 
word that they were safe. 

Our Five Great Needs 

The adventures of the wrecked airmen proved that they 
needed food, clothes, shelter, ways of carrying things, and 
ways of sending messages. 

But were they alone in needing these things? No. You 
need them. All people have these needs, and that is why, all 
the world over, people are working. 



20 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 



How Men Work to Satisfy Our Needs 
Farmers and herdsmen must work to get us food. Lumber¬ 
men in the forests must work to get wood for the buildings 
which shelter us. Workers on trains and ships must carry 



food from the farms to feed the people in the cities. They 
must carry clothes from factories in the cities to supply the 
people on the farms and in the forests. Telephone operators, 
telegraph operators, wireless operators, must help in sending 
messages which go back and forth between city factories 
































WHY THE WORLD WORKS 


21 


and farms. Men in the post offices are busy receiving and 
sending letters. Miners deep down in mines must dig out 
ores which are used in making tools for all the other workers. 
In other mines men are digging coal to be used to heat our 
houses and to run machinery in factories. 

But what of ministers and priests, teachers, doctors, 
lawyers, scientists, and other men of learning? What of 
musicians; people who write stories, poems, and plays; 
people who paint pictures and make statues? What of 
baseball players, football players, tennis players, and other 
athletes? 

All these men and women work. Do we say that their 
work is not needed? No. Men of learning are all workers 
who may use their learning to help other workers. 

Poets, people who paint pictures or write plays, all men 
and women who work in the arts may help other workers by 
entertaining them in their hours of rest. 

The spirit of sport and athletic play helps to keep people 
in good cheer. 

Now if we think of all the work in which our own friends 
and relatives are engaged, we can see how many of them are 
busy trying to supply one or another of our needs. 


Things to Do 

1. Can you write in a list all the kinds of work mentioned in 
Chapter 3? 

2. Can you mark on the map of the United States the places 
where some of these kinds of work are being done? 







22 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


3. Did you get the idea that men and women are doing 
about the same kinds of work the world over? Tell your class 
what you know about this. 

4. In the list of words below are some that you may not 
have known before. Will you tell your class what you think 
these words mean? 

transportation desolate miners 

wilderness communication adventures 

If you do not remember the meanings of these words, read 
the chapter again and see if you cannot find their meanings 
from your reading. Perhaps your classmates or your teacher 
will help you. 






Chapter 4 

THE EARTH AS A STOREHOUSE 

If we trace back any of the things which workers have 
made for us, we find that the earth is the storehouse from 
which we get the things we need. 

Let us begin by tracing back the coats we wear. We find 
that they were bought in the clothing store. The store¬ 
keeper bought them from a clothing factory. The factory 
owner made the coats from woolen cloth which he bought 
from a woolen mill. The owner of the woolen mill made the 
cloth from wool which he bought from a herdsman. The 
herdsman got the wool from his sheep. The sheep obtained 
its wool by feeding on grass, which is a plant growing from 
the earth. 

The dishes from which we eat were bought in a store. The 
storekeeper bought them from a pottery, where they were 
made from a kind of soil called clay. The clay the potter 
used was taken from beds of finely powdered rock in the 
earth. Have you ever noticed the earthy smell of wet 
clay? 

So we see that the earth has provided us with our coats 
and our dishes. If we trace back anything else, whether it 
be an article of food, clothing, or shelter, a means of trans¬ 
portation or of communication, or a tool of any sort, we 

23 


24 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


shall find that the materials from which it is made come from 
the earth. 

If we think of the earth on which we live as a storehouse, 
we find that in this storehouse there are three kinds of things: 
plants, animals, and non-living things called minerals. Let 
us think of these three kinds of things as three departments 
in nature’s storehouse: the mineral department, the plant 
department, and the animal department. Now, one by one, 
we shall enter into these three departments to see how we 
obtain from them the things which we need. 

The Mineral Department 

The mineral department is a most important department. 

By far the greater part of the earth is made up of minerals. 
The air above the earth, the waters which flow on the surface 
of the earth, the soil beneath our feet, the rocks, metals, oils, 
and gas under the soil, are all made of mineral materials. 

Let us see some of the ways in which the mineral depart¬ 
ment supplies man with the material for his food, clothing, 
shelter, transportation, and communication. 

Without the minerals which come in the form of air and 
water, neither plants nor animals can live. Plants and ani¬ 
mals must have air to breathe and water to drink. In some 
foods, such as apples, tomatoes, and grapes, there is iron. In 
milk there is calcium and lime. Iron, calcium, and lime are 
minerals. The body needs these minerals as part of its food. 
Thus the mineral department helps to feed man. One of 
the most important minerals which man needs in his food is 



THE EARTH AS A STOREHOUSE 


25 


salt. Later we shall read how workers obtain the salt which 
we use as part of our food. 

Now let us see whether minerals supply material for mak¬ 
ing clothing. At first it may seem that this is impossible. 
We do not wear air or water or rock. But the knights of old 
did wear suits of iron, and during the recent World War 
soldiers wore metal helmets. Iron and other metals are, of 
course, minerals. Should you be surprised if you learned 
that there are minerals even in the clothes you are wearing? 
There are. The dyes which were used to put the colors into 
your clothes were made from minerals. 

Next let us consider shelter. Do the workers who build 
our homes and other buildings use minerals? Have you ever 
seen a stone house; iron, brass, or copper pipes; iron nails, 
glass windows, concrete foundations, bricks, cement? Stone, 
iron, brass, copper, glass, concrete, bricks, cement, are all 
mineral materials. Take these things out of your school 
building, and how much of the building have you left? 

The iron and copper in your school building are metals 
which workers obtain from mines. The bricks were made 
from clay. Glass is made from sand. Cement is made from 
grinding different kinds of stone to a fine powder; concrete 
is made by mixing sand, cement, crushed stone, and water. 
In later chapters we shall learn more about these building 
materials and how workers obtain them from the earth. 

Before leaving the subject of shelter, we might think of a 
few other minerals used to give us comfort in our homes. 
The coal, gas, or oil which heat our homes or cook our food 




26 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


are also minerals which workers obtain for us from the 
earth. 

Clearly, the mineral department in the great storehouse of 
the earth helps to supply us with food, clothes, and shelter. 
Likewise, minerals help man in the matter of transportation. 
You can list for yourselves some of the minerals used in 
making wagons, automobiles, ships, airplanes, and other 
vehicles which aid us in transportation. You can readily 
remember that the coal in the railroad locomotive, the 
gasoline in the automobile and airplane motor, are minerals. 

How about the use of minerals in communication? Re¬ 
move the copper wires from our telephones and radios and 
see what happens. Clearly, one mineral at least is most im¬ 
portant in communication. 

The Plant Department 

If we now turn from the mineral to the plant department, 
we shall find that man uses the plants in nature’s storehouse 
for much of his food, for the material from which he makes 
his clothing and his shelter. We shall find that man uses 
materials obtained from plants to aid him even in transpor¬ 
tation and communication. 

As for food, you yourselves can list at least ten plant foods, 
including in your list various kinds of fruits, vegetables, and 
grains, such as apples, cabbages, and wheat. 

In the case of clothes you may not be able to list all the 
clothing materials which man gets from the plant depart¬ 
ment in nature’s storehouse. Let us therefore remind you 





THE EARTH AS A STOREHOUSE 


27 


that your straw hat, your rubber boots, your linen handker¬ 
chief, the cotton in your stockings, were obtained from 
plants. In Chapter 20 you will read how man learned to 
use these plant materials in making clothing. 


HOW MAN USES PLANTS FOR HIS NEEDS 

FOOD 

fruits vegetables cereals 

CLOTHES 

^^^J^cotton f-flaxlf ^Ikrubberj^ 

SHELTER 


TRANS¬ 

PORTATION 

■^^^wood flax 

COMMUNI¬ 

CATION 

^ This paper 

made from 

irl 1 wooden poles -^^^vvood pulp 

TOOLS 



“Very well,” you may say, “but how about shelter?” 
We have just mentioned all the minerals in the home. Are 
plant materials also used in building? Surely. Wood is 
still one of the most common building materials, and the 
wood comes from trees, which are certainly plants. 

So, too, plants help man in transportation and communi¬ 
cation. There is wood in wagons, buses, railroad cars, ships, 
and other means of transportation. If we regard books and 

















28 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


writing as a means of communication between people, we 
discover that here, too, plants are used. The ink with which 
these words were printed was made of carbon and other 
minerals; the type and printing presses used in printing this 
book were made of steel and iron; but this paper page was 
made from wood pulp, which is a plant material. 

By this time you see that we can make a game of search¬ 
ing for ways in which the different departments help to sup¬ 
ply man with his needs. 

The Animal Department 

Let us see how man uses animals to supply his needs. 

Again we shall begin with food. Here, clearly enough, 
animals play a leading part. There are some people who eat 
only plant foods, but many people the world over eat meat 
and fish. They drink the milk of the cow and other animals, 
and eat butter and cheese, which are dairy products, or 
products made from milk. They eat chickens, ducks, geese, 
and turkeys, and hens’ eggs as well. 

You could easily have given most of this list of foods your¬ 
selves, but can you list all the ways in which animals help 
to clothe us? Did you know that your leather shoes, your 
mother’s fur coat, your woolen sweater, your silk tie, were 
all made from materials obtained from the animal depart¬ 
ment? In Chapters 18 and 19 you will read about furs, 
leather, wool, and silk, and how animals play their part in 
clothing the world. 

When we come to shelter, it may seem difficult to go on 





THE EARTH AS A STOREHOUSE 


29 


with the game. But don’t give up. You can think of ways 
in which animals are used to help build homes for people. 
If you can’t, look at the picture chart on this page. It will 
remind you. In the picture on the row labeled “Shelter,” 
you will see an Indian tepee and an Eskimo summer tent. 
These tents were made of animal skins; and so it becomes 


HOW MAN USE.S ANIMALS FOR. HIS NEEDS 

FOOD 

milk^^ Qcfeam 

CLOTHES 

leather 

4(5^^silk ^^wool 

SHELTER 

Indian %: / ^Eskimo 

tent 

TRANS¬ 

PORTATION 



clear that some people did turn to the animal department 
in earth’s storehouse to find material with which to build 
their homes. 

Next we come to transportation. Do animals help us in 
transportation? That’s an easy question to answer. You 
can name at least four animals which are used to carry people 
and goods from place to place: the camel, the elephant, the 
horse, the donkey. 

The next question is difficult. Does the animal depart- 













30 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


ment furnish materials which aid man in sending messages? 
Until recently many people used quill pens in writing. A 
quill is a long, sharp feather of a bird’s wing. Many savage 
tribes use drums or tom-toms for signaling; the heads of 
the drums are made of animal skins. Glue is an animal 
material; it is made of hoofs and other meat scraps. There 
is glue in the binding of this book, and the book is one of the 
greatest means of communication ever invented. 

Speaking of books, did you know that before people 
learned to print books on paper, they wrote books by hand 
on parchment? The parchment was made from a material 
furnished by the animal department. Parchment is pre¬ 
pared sheepskin. Parchment is still used. Some day if you 
go to college, you will receive a diploma announcing that 
you have completed your course. Your diploma probably 
will be made of parchment. When you receive it, let it 
remind you that in one more way the earth, which is the 
storehouse of our needs, is serving you. 

Things to Do 

1. Either draw or cut out of a newspaper or magazine a pic¬ 
ture of an automobile. Show by arrows and printed lettering 
which parts of the car came from the animal department, which 
from the plant department, and which from the mineral depart¬ 
ment. 

2. See whether you can trace back to the different depart¬ 
ments in the storehouse of the earth all the materials in this 
book, including the book linen used in the cover, the glue used 
in binding the paper, the ink, the metal plates from which the 
illustrations were made. 





THE EARTH AS A STOREHOUSE 31 


3. Make a chart divided into three columns as follows: 


BUILDING MATERIALS 

Mineral 

Animal 

Plant 





Then write in each column the name of building materials which 
come from that department. 

4. Play a game to be called “The Earth’s Storehouse.” 
Divide the class into three groups. The first group conducts 
the mineral department; the second group, the plant depart¬ 
ment; the third group, the animal department. We feel sure 
that with this hint, you can work out a game which will make 
clear how each department in the earth’s storehouse supplies 
people with things which they need. You can, if you wish, 
have the teacher play in the game. The teacher could say, 
“I need food.” Then some one in each department could 
offer food. The teacher could say, “I need clothes.” Then 
some one in each department could offer a material which could 
make clothes, and so on. 









Chapter 5 

THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 

When we step into a department store we can look at it as 
either one of two things. We can see it as a storehouse from 
which people buy the things they need, or we can see it as a 
workplace in which salespeople, section managers, shipping 
clerks, window dressers, and other workers are all busy at 
their various tasks. 

We can, if we choose, look at the earth in either one of 
these two ways. We have just read about the world as a 
storehouse, with its various departments each helping to 
supply our needs. In this chapter we shall consider the 
world as a workshop in which forces of nature are at work. 

The three forces of nature which we shall consider in this 
chapter are fire, wind, and water. 

32 














THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


33 


In our chapter on “Why the World Works” we found that 
all over the world people are working, and that they are 
working to supply us with the things we need. Now we 
shall see how all over the world the forces of nature are also 
at work. 

Fire and the Sun 

The first force of nature which we shall consider is the 
force of fire which comes to the earth in the form of heat 
from the sun. This heat from the burning sun is constantly 
doing things in nature’s workshop. 

The sun’s heat is at work in all living things. Whether 
they are plants, animals, or human beings, all living things 
are factories run by the heat of the sun. 

Look at a growing plant. Does it look like a factory? 
Hardly. Yet a plant is a factory. Its leaves, its roots, its 
stems, are all busy working to change air, water, and the 
mineral materials of the earth into plant materials. 

Plant a bean in a pot of good soil; place the pot in a sunny 
place; water it daily, and in a few days the seed will sprout. 
Soon roots, stem, and leaves will appear. In a few weeks 
beans will grow on the plant. During those weeks work 
was going on inside the plant, just as work goes on inside a 
factory. The plant manufactured beans. 

Plant a second bean in a pot of good soil, and place the 
pot in a cold, dark place. Water it daily. Watch it for 
weeks. The bean may sprout, but the plant will not grow. 
No beans will be manufactured. Why? Because the plant 
factory needed the fire of the sun to help it in its work. 





34 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


All living things need the force of fire, which comes in the 
form of the sun’s heat. Without the heat from the sun, the 
work which is going on in all living things would stop; plants, 
animals, and human beings would die. 

Our experiment with the beans has shown us one way in 
which the force of fire is at work in nature’s workshop. The 



heat given off from the burning sun helps all living things 
to grow. 

There is a second way in which the force of fire is at work 
in nature. The sun is the great climate maker. The heat 
from the sun warms the earth; the heat from the sun warms 
the waters which are on the face of the earth. All day long 
the sun is heating earth and water. 

Because the earth is shaped like a ball, the sun does not 
heat all parts of the earth equally. Set a pan of water out in 
the open, and test its temperature with a thermometer in 
the early morning, at noon, and in the evening. See how 
much warmer the pan is at noon. When the sun is overhead 







THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


35 


and shines directly down on the water, the fire in the sun 
can heat the water easily. When the sun is low and its rays 
shine on the pan at a low angle, the fire in the sun cannot 
heat the water so easily. 

So it is with the sun and the earth. In parts of the world 
where the sun’s rays shine directly on the earth, the climate 



is hot. That is why the airmen found India hot. In parts 
of the earth where the sun’s rays shine on the earth less 
directly, the fire in the sun heats the earth less. That is why 
the airmen found cold weather in Alaska, Greenland, and 
Iceland. 

It is for this same reason, as we learned from our pan of 
water, that the weather in any one place may grow hotter 
or colder as the sun rises higher or sinks lower. 

We know, too, that the weather in any one place changes 
from day to day according to the seasons. This is because 
the sun shines on the same parts of the earth at different 
angles at different times of the year. In those months of the 
year when the sun shines on your home most directly, it is 










36 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 



summer. In those months when the sun shines on your home 
least directly, it is winter. 

The Sun and the Force of the Winds 

We have learned how the sun heats the earth. To learn 
how the work of the sun helps cool the earth, we shall now 
read about the sun and the winds. 

The sun creates the winds which cool the earth. You may 
ask, “But how does the sun, which is hot, create winds, which 
are cool?” Let us see. 

As the sun heats the earth, the hot earth in turn heats the 
air. When air gets warm, it rises, just as smoke rises out of 
chimneys and smokestacks. When the heated air above 
some warm place rises, cooler air from some other spot rushes 
in to fill its place. So we get a movement of air upward as 
well as from the south, the north, the east, and the west. A 






























THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


37 


wind from the south is called a south wind; a wind from 
the north is called a north wind. Winds from the east and 
west are called east and west winds. 

A breeze is a gently moving flow of cool air. A wind is a 
swiftly moving flow of air. 

The heat from the fiery sun starts winds on their way. 
Once they are blowing, the winds perform their own work in 
nature’s workshop. 

Can you think of any of the work performed by winds? 
Watch the clouds moving up above. What drives them 
through the air? You are right. The winds. What other 
work do the winds perform? Winds help to change the 
weather. Warm winds may bring rain; cold winds may 
bring snow. Summer breezes help to cool plants, and so 
save them from burning up in the heat of the sun. 

Winds carry the seeds of plants and scatter them. That 
is how the wild forests, the wild fruits and berries, spread 
over the face of the earth. 

The Force of Water 

So far we have considered the work of fire and wind. Now 
let us see the work of a third force in nature, the force of 
water. 

The fire of the sun heats the air and starts currents of wind 
on their way. The fire of the sun heats water, which is all 
over the surface of the earth, in the soil as well as in rivers, 
lakes, and oceans. The heat of the sun changes water to 
vapor, which rises in the air and forms clouds. Winds drive 





38 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


the clouds. Later, the water in the clouds falls as rain, snow, 
or sleet. In Chapter 16 you will read more about the way in 
which the sun and air change water to vapor. You will read 
about the journey of a drop of water in a cloud from the 
ocean to our drinking cup. Here we shall study only how 
water works after it has fallen as rain. 

As you know, the surface of the earth is not even. The 
fliers in their trip around the world saw level country, 
valleys, hills, and mountains. The water which falls on 
level country sinks into the earth. What happens to the 
water which falls on the hills and mountains? Some of this 
water also sinks into the earth. The rest flows downward 
in brooks and rivulets. Wherever the earth slopes gently, 
the water moves slowly. Where the earth slopes sharply, 
the water moves rapidly. We call such a place rapids. When 
water flows over a cliff, there is a waterfall. 

Whether the water is flowing on the earth or underground, 
moving swiftly or slowly, it is working in many ways. On 
mountain sides forests may have been growing for centuries. 
The fallen leaves, decaying on the ground, make the soil 
rich. Plants grow well in such topsoil. The water carries 
this rich topsoil down from the mountains into the valleys. 
It is because of this topsoil that many river valleys make 
good farming country. 

On its downward course the flowing water does other work. 
The water wears away the banks of streams on either side. 
Swiftly flowing water carries small rocks down with it. The 
water flowing over and around rocks shapes them, rounding 





THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


39 


them. In cold countries water lying in the roughly grained 
rock freezes in winter. As the water turns to ice, it expands 
and grows larger. If there is no room for the water to ex¬ 
pand, the ice, as it forms, splits off pieces of rock. 

Water works on rock even under the surface of the earth. 
The water which trickles down through the soil finally 
reaches rock. When it does, the water flows downward 
along the rock. The action of the moving water wears 
away the rock and changes it to soil. 

The most wonderful example of the force of water is the 
Grand Canyon in Colorado, where the Colorado River has 
worn a deep path through miles of rocky cliffs. 

We must not forget an important work which water per¬ 
forms. All plants and animals would die without water; 
they need water to help keep them cool. They also need 
water to help them dissolve the minerals which they need 
for their food. 

In order to see more clearly how important water is in the 
growth of plants, let us perform another experiment. 

Fill two small flowerpots with good garden soil. Plant 
a bean in each. Place both pofs in the sun. Water one pot 
immediately after planting; continue to water it, adding 
a cup of water once a day toward evening. Do not water 
the other pot. In time a plant will grow out of the bean in 
the well-watered pot. The bean in the other pot may sprout 
from the water which was in the earth; but without addi¬ 
tional water, it will not grow. Clearly, the water in the first 
pot worked to aid in the growth of the plant and the produc- 




40 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


tion of the beans. From this experiment we can see why 
farming lands are found wherever there is much rain as well 
as plenty of the sun’s heat; and why there are deserts wher¬ 
ever there is burning sunlight without much water. 

The Soil 


Now let us turn to study the soil, a most important ma¬ 
terial in earth’s workshop. 



Let us examine the soil to see what it is made of and what 
part it plays in nature’s worl^shop. We shall study the soil, 
not in the flowerpot, but out in the woods. 

When you walk in the woods, you will find that much of 
the topsoil is loose and dark brown or almost black in color. 
This rich soil is called humus. Humus is soil which contains 
decayed plant and animal matter, such as dead leaves and 
insects. Humus makes good food for growing plants. 

If you now take a shovel and dig deep enough below the 














THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


41 


humus, you will come to bed rock, as it is called. If you dig 
down anywhere on the surface of the earth, sooner or later 
you will come to bed rock. 

As you are digging down toward the bed rock of the earth, 
you may see some round stones. You will know from their 
round faces that these stones once lay in the beds of streams 
where running water smoothed off their rough edges. You 
may see layers of shale, a stone which has been made crumbly 
by the force of underground water. You will find rough 
stones hard as iron; yet if you put one of these in a glass of 
water, you will notice that there will soon be a layer of sand 
at the bottom of the glass. Where does this sand come from? 
It comes from the surface of the rock which has been slowly 
crumbling, as heat, wind, and water work upon it to break it 
down. 

At first, before there were plants and animals on the earth, 
all the soil was rock. But in time the action of heat, wind, 
and water, as well as other forces, broke down much of the 
rock into sand, silt, clay, and gravel. 

Gravel is the coarsest form of soil. It is a mixture of sand 
and pebbles. 

Sand is the form of soil next in coarseness. It is easy to 
work, but so loose that water can wash all humus out of it. 
It dries out quickly. Some plants are started in sand be¬ 
cause it is easy to work, and then transplanted to other soil 
which has more humus in it. 

Silt is a still finer soil. 

Clay is the finest soil. It is sticky when wet, and almost as 




42 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


hard as rock when dry. It is a heavy soil, and holds water a 
long time. It is stiff and hard to work. Roots cannot go 
very deep into a clayey soil, but grass grows well in such soil. 

The best soil for most garden vegetables, grains, and fruits 
is loam, which is a mixture of sand, clay, and humus. Loam 
is a fertile soil because it helps the plant factory to get air, 
food, and water. The sand keeps the soil loose so that air 
can get to the roots. The clay holds moisture. The humus 
helps to feed the plants. 

When a crop is growing, it is using up the humus in the 
soil. Before the farmer plants again, he may have to use a 
fertilizer to put back into the soil a fresh supply of the plant 
foods which humus contains. 

You could not live by going out into your garden and 
eating the soil, but a plant can eat soil. As the plant grows 
from the soil, it can furnish you and your family with meat 
and potatoes, bread, and butter. Green plants are often 
called the food-makers of the world, since upon them depends 
the food of all animals and human beings. 

We have told many things about the work of fire, wind, 
and water, and yet we have not half told all the work that 
these three forces are doing in nature’s workshop. We have 
not told all, but we have told enough to help you understand, 
as you read on, how the work of nature, joined to the work 
of man, aids in supplying us with the things we need. 

In the largest sense of the word home, the earth is our 
home — the whole earth with the skies above our head and 




THE EARTH AS A WORKSHOP 


43 


the soil beneath our feet. So far in this book you have read 
many things about this earth of ours, but most of us today 
live in cities where we are likely to think little about the 
earth and the ways in which we get things from it. In the 
next chapter we shall read about a time when all the people 
in the world lived so close to the earth that men, women, 
and children obtained all the things they needed directly 
from the earth. 

Things to Do 

1. The class should get a thermometer, learn how to read it, 
and keep it in some suitable outdoor place. Make a class chart 
on which the class can keep a daily record of the outdoor tem¬ 
perature at different times of the day, all through the term. See 
what you can learn from this chart about some of the work of 
the sun, from hour to hour, and from season to season. 


Date 

9 A.M. 

Noon 

3 P.M. 






2. Make a chart to keep a record of the winds. See whether 
you can find that winds from any one direction usually bring 
rain or snow. 


Date 

9 A.M. 

Noon 

3 P.M. 

Rain or Snow 
(hour) 























44 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


3. Describe an apple tree as a factory which makes apples. 
Explain as best you can how the heat of the sun, the wind, and 
water all help this factory to produce apples. 

4. You can invent a game or play in which Fire, Wind, and 
Water tell of the work they do in nature’s workshop. 

5. An interesting thing to do would be to go into the country 
to look for as many signs as you can find of the work which 
the sun, wind, and water are doing. 

6. On that trip you can collect examples of different kinds 
of soil; you can also collect rocks which show the action of 
water. 




Chapter 6 


WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD WAS 
A WILDERNESS 

In the spring we all like to go walking in the woods to see 
the wild flowers. No gardener planted the seeds of these 
flowers in the woods. But when the ice and snow have 
left the northern hills and valleys, these wild plants push 
their way upward through the soil and are soon in blossom. 

Sometimes as we walk through the woods, we startle a 
rabbit along our path. Does any one own that rabbit? No. 
It is a wild creature and belongs to no one. 

Wilderness Places Today 

There are some places in the world where almost all plants 
grow wild, as do the flowers we see in the woods; where all 
the animals are as wild and untamed as that rabbit. 

We call a place where the plants and animals grow wild, a 
wilderness. In the cold northern countries, such as Iceland 
and Greenland, most of the land is wilderness. The few 
plants which grow are wild plants. Except for the Eskimo 
dog and the reindeer, the animals are wild animals. These 
northern countries where it is cold almost all the year round 
are called the Arctic countries. Seals, white bears, walrus, 

and caribou are some of the Arctic wild animals. 

45 


46 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


In India, where the climate is hot all the year round, much 
of the land is wilderness. 

If we look at a globe, we shall see a line running around it 
from east to west and back again. This line is called the 
equator. The countries which lie near the equator are called 
tropical countries. 

A wilderness in a tropical country is usually a jungle. In 
a jungle the trees grow thickly and a rich vegetation of all 
kinds covers the earth. This heavy growth is due to the 
great heat of the sun and the frequent rains. Because of the 
dense growth, jungles are almost impassable. 

In the jungles there are many wild animals, such as 
the tiger, the lion, the leopard, and the jaguar. There is a 
great variety of brightly colored birds. There are also many 
poisonous snakes. Hunters have brought back many of 
these jungle creatures which one can see if one visits a zoo 
or a circus. 

There was a time within the memory of our grandparents 
when the country not far from our own homes was as wild 
as the Arctic countries or the tropical jungles are today. 

There was a time many thousands of years ago when the 
whole world was a wilderness in which all plants grew wild 
and all animals were wild creatures. 

How did the people who lived in the wilderness of long 
ago get what they needed? 




THE WHOLE WORLD A WILDERNESS 47 


Cave Dwellers: Life in the Wilderness Long Ago 

Scientists have found out how some early wilderness 
dwellers found shelter. In different parts of the world caves 
have been found which are thousands of years old. In the 
earth of these caves scientists have found stone tools which 
must have been made by men. In this way we know that 
caves were the shelters of men and women and children who 
lived long before any one thought of building houses. 

For food the women who lived in those days gathered 
berries and fruits of different kinds, wild grains, nuts, and 
the roots of plants. The men hunted for wild animals. 

When the boys grew up, they became hunters. The girls 
learned from their mothers to gather wild plant foods. They 
also helped their mothers make clothes from animal skins. 
We can easily imagine how busy these people must have 
been, for all the day they were occupied with making, gather¬ 
ing, or hunting the things that they needed in their daily 
life. When night set in and the woods resounded with the 
howling of animals, these people must have been glad to 
creep into their cave shelters for their night’s sleep. 

Questions to Answer 

1. What is a wilderness? Find the sentence on page 45 
which tells you what a wilderness is. 

2. Did you find out from reading this chapter where there 
are places like those described? 

3. Do you think that India today is entirely a wilderness? 
Are there any large cities in India? 

4. What other countries are named in this chapter? 



48 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


Things to Do 

1. Find on your maps and globes all the places mentioned 
in this chapter. 

2. Write a list in your notebook of the names of all the wild 
animals mentioned in this chapter. 

3. Perhaps you can bring pictures of them to show to your 
class. 

4. If there is a zoo near your home, perhaps you will want 
to visit it and see some of these wild animals. 

5. You might like to draw pictures of them. 

6. Copy the list of words below, then write the meaning of 
each word on the line opposite. 

jungle _ 

blossom_ 

cave _ 

tropical _ 

creatures __ 

7. Add to your list other words you find in this chapter 
which you would like to remember the meaning of. 









Chapter 7 

HOW MAN CONQUERED THE WILDERNESS 

In this chapter we shall read how inventors helped man in 
the conquest of the wilderness. 

For a long time the whole world was a wilderness in which 
many people lived by hunting. While some hunters were 
still hunting for game, there were men who lived as herdsmen 
on the pasture plains where sheep and cattle grazed. 

The grass-eating animals were gentle, and the herdsmen 
killed them only when they needed meat. Whenever the 
herds were moved to new pastures in search of grass and 
water, the herdsmen and their families had to follow. So they 
became wanderers, or nomads, following the herds of grazing 
animals and dwelling in tents which they carried with them 
from place to place. 

How Early Farmers Fought the Wilderness 

Some of the hunters and herdsmen learned that by plant¬ 
ing seed in good earth, they could raise wheat and other 
grains. No one knows how men first discovered this. But 
when men learned how to raise plants from seed, they also 
learned that they must stay in one place to watch and take 
care of their crops. So men settled down to till the soil and 
live as farmers. 

More than seven thousand years ago there were farmers 
49 


50 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


in the land of Egypt. Egypt is a country in northern Africa. 
The Nile River, which flows through the land of Egypt, 
overflows its banks once a year, spreading a rich topsoil 
over the fields. This topsoil helps to make the land fertile. 
It is easy to grow crops in Egypt. 

In Egypt long ago farmers built their houses near their 
fields of grain. These houses stood close together in small 
villages. A few of these villages grew into towns. 

When the Nile River overflows its banks, much of Egypt 
along the river is like a great sea. People, in those early 
days, were in danger of losing their homes, their animals, 
and their own lives in the flood. The water had to be con¬ 
trolled. Their homes and lands had to be saved. 

To save their houses and lands, the early farmers of Egypt 
had to build great dikes and small islands where they could 
stay during the late summer months while the river was 
overflowing. 

Such a piece of work needed great numbers of people. No 
one man or his family could do this work alone. People had 
to call upon their neighbors for help. 

So because of the dangerous floods, the Egyptian farmers 
and villagers learned to join forces with one another and to 
work together. After a time all the farmers, villagers, and 
townsmen in the land were joined together as one nation 
under one strong ruler and one set of laws. 

It took many, many years for Egypt to grow into a nation 
from such small beginnings. But it grew into a powerful 
nation, the oldest in the world. 




HOW MAN CONQUERED THE WILDERNESS 51 


After Egypt became a nation, slowly the hunters and the 
herdsmen in other lands gave up their old life. They cleared 
the forests for farming; they built villages and towns. 


Man the Inventor and Tool-Maker 
Man never could have conquered the wilderness had he 
not been an inventor. 



The early wilderness dwellers had learned how to make 
tools out of wood, stone, and bone. Out of wood they made 
clubs, daggers, and arrows. Out of hard stone they made 
hammers, knives, and axes. These tools not only helped 
in doing work, but they also helped in fighting fierce and 
dangerous animals. 

After a time people learned how to make woolen cloth on 
hand looms. Women were the first spinners and weavers. 
















52 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


They made the first baskets, and some say they discovered 
the making of pottery. Later you will learn how important 
these discoveries are to us today. 

Fire is one of the greatest forces which man ever learned 
to use. No one knows how he discovered it. It sometimes 
happens that a tree struck by lightning takes fire and burns 
for days. In some parts of the world there are volcanoes. 
These are mountains in which fires burn. At times these 
fires burst out of the mountain tops, and streams of lava, 
or burning rock, flow down the mountain sides, setting fire 
to the forests. 

How Fire Helped in Conquering the Wilderness 

For ages the sight of fire must have terrified man, but the 
time came when people learned to make fire serve them. 
They learned how to keep a fire burning by piling fresh fuel 
on the blazing logs. As the flames blazed up, the firemakers 
fed the fire. Later men learned how to start fires themselves 
by rubbing two stones or two pieces of wood together. 

With fire, people baked their clay pots. The fire cooked 
their meats. It helped to warm them through the cold 
winters. 

Watching their outdoor fires, people noticed that heat 
melted some of the earth’s substances. One substance which 
they saw melted by fire was copper. 

When copper or any other metal is melted, it can be poured 
into a mold of any shape; and as it cools it hardens in the 
shape of the mold. With this knowledge, men became metal 





HOW MAN CONQUERED THE WILDERNESS 53 


workers. They made hammers, axes, knives, swords, dag¬ 
gers, and other metal tools. 

The metal workers of Egypt learned the art of making 
tools, first from copper; then from bronze, which is copper 
mixed with tin; then from iron. Metal axes helped men to 
clear the wild forests. With metal axes they cut wood and 
built themselves wooden ships. Then they put sails on their 
ships, so that the winds would carry them more swiftly 
across the waters. 

How the Wind Helped in Conquering the Wilderness 

From this time on, the wind as well as fire helped man in 
conquering the wilderness. 

At first the Egyptian boats sailed only on the Nile River. 
Then Egyptian boats, and boats built by other peoples, 
sailed out on the Mediterranean Sea, which lies between 
Europe and Africa. These boats carried the knowledge of 
farming and town-building to the hunters and herdsmen in 
Europe. 

For thousands of years the people of Europe were busy 
taming their own wild lands by turning them into farms and 
towns and nations. So England, France, Spain, and the 
other nations of Europe came to be. Each nation lived 
under its own ruler and had its own laws. 

Finding the New World Wilderness 

Then in the year 1492, a sailor named Christopher Colum¬ 
bus led a fleet of three sailboats westward across the Atlantic. 



54 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


The fleet which Columbus commanded discovered a new 
world, America, where the Indians lived. • 

A great part of America was still an untamed wilderness 
in which Indian tribes obtained most of their food by hunt¬ 
ing. 

In a few years many boats from Europe were crossing the 
Atlantic Ocean. They were carrying European men, women, 
and children, who were coming to the American wilderness 
to live. They were bringing with them the seeds and the 
metal tools which they had learned to use in Europe. They 
were bringing sheep, cattle, and other tame animals which 
they had raised in Europe. 

Conquering the New Wilderness 
In America these people used their metal axes to chop 
down the wild forests, to clear farms, and to build towns in 
the part of the country which lies near the Atlantic Ocean. 

From early colonial days until about one hundred and 
fifty years ago, the farmers and the townspeople who lived 
in our country had to obey kings and laws made in England. 
Then they fought a war which freed them from the rule of 
England, and they formed themselves into a separate nation, 
the United States of America. 

Later, when more and more people came from Europe, 
many men and their families put their household goods, 
seed, and farming tools into covered wagons, and set out to 
conquer the wilderness in the western part of the American 
country. Still a large part of America remained wilderness, 






HOW MAN CONQUERED THE WILDERNESS 55 


especially the part of our country which lies west of the 
Mississippi River. 

New Tools Help to Build the American Nation 

About one hundred years ago men discovered the use of 
steam power, and so were able to invent new means of trans¬ 
portation. They invented steamships to sail upon the 
American waters and steam locomotives which helped to 
carry great numbers of men and women across the American 
continent. All along the way the newcomers in the West 
turned the wilderness into good farms, thriving villages, 
towns, and cities. They helped to build new states which 
joined with the other states in the United States of America. 

So far, in their fight against the wilderness, men had been 
aided by fire, wind, and steam power. Now men learned 
to use a strange new force called electricity. Some men in¬ 
vented the telephone, the telegraph, the cable, the wireless, 
the radio, and the gasoline motor which made the automobile 
and the airplane possible. 

The inventions which use electricity are aiding in the fur¬ 
ther conquest of the wildernesses which are still to be found 
in various parts of the earth. 

Today the radio and the airplane are being used by ex¬ 
plorers who are pushing their way into the portions of the 
earth as yet untamed. Did you read of the use of the air¬ 
plane and the radio in a recent exploration of the South 
Pole? 




56 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


Questions to Answer 

1. Where did these early peoples live? 

2. Why were they called Nomads? 

3. What caused them to change their way of living? 

Things to Do 

1. Find the locations on your maps and globes of the homes 
of these early peoples. 

2. Draw a map showing these locations. 

3. Describe the life of a cave man, of an ancient herdsman, 
of an ancient farmer. 

4. Write or tell the story of ancient man which you learned 
in this chapter. 

5. The words below tell something about ways of living 
and working; write the meanings of these words: 


primitive 

farmers 

cave men 

villagers 

hunters 

townspeople 

herdsmen 

rulers 

till 

looms 

mold 

colonial 



Chapter 8 

THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH 

We who live in the United States today live either on 
farms or in villages or in towns or in cities. More than one- 
half of us live in towns and cities. The others live on farms 
or in villages. 

Do the people in all other lands live as we do? 

No. The conquest of the wilderness and the building of 
nations has not gone on equally in all lands. 

Life in the Wilderness Lands 

In the tropical countries there is still much wilderness, 
because the warm climate and the rapid growth of vegeta¬ 
tion make it hard to keep the jungles clear for farming. In 
the jungle people build no cities; they do not band together 
as great nations. 

In the Arctic countries in many places the land is too cold 
for farming, except for a short time each year. So here, too, 
the land is mostly wilderness and people live for the most 
part by hunting and fishing. The men sometimes hunt in 
small bands, but the Arctic dwellers have not united to form 
great nations. 

If we look at the under side of our globes, we shall find the 

Antarctic lands. Here, as in the Arctic lands, the winters are 

57 


58 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


long and cold. The Antarctic lands are still wilderness, and 
there are no Antarctic nations. 

Strong Nations in the Temperate Zones 

Where are the nations of today? Let us see. Between 
the Arctic lands and the tropics there is a part of the world 
called the North Temperate Zone. Between the Antarctic 
lands and the tropics lies the South Temperate Zone. This 
makes five zones or belts around the earth — the Arctic, 
the North Temperate, the Tropical, the South Temperate, 
and the Antarctic. 

In the two temperate zones, the climate is neither too hot 
nor too cold. Each year there are four seasons: spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter. During the spring people 
plant their seed. It grows through the spring and summer. 
In the fall farmers gather their harvest. 

The strongest nations in the world today are the United 
States in North America; England, France, Italy, and the 
other countries in Europe; Japan in Asia. These lie within 
the North Temperate Zone. 

How Work Today Is Divided: Farms, 

Cities, Nations 

Long ago when the whole world was a wilderness and there 
were no farms or cities, men obtained all the things which 
they needed from the earth through their own work. Ever 
since people have been living on farms and in cities, work has 
been divided. Farmers raise food for themselves and for the 




THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH 


59 


city dwellers. The workers in the city factories make things 
for the farmers. 

In our own country, because of new tools invented within 
the last hundred years, the work of the farms and cities is 
becoming more divided than ever. Most of the farmers and 
the city workers of today use the new tools to work at just 
one thing. There are farmers, for example, who raise only 
wheat. There are city workers who make only shoes or 
some one part of a shoe. 

Almost everything which the farmers and city workers 
need comes to them through the labor of people whom they 
have never met, living in places which they have never seen. 

So the work of the whole world is divided. Each country 
is busy making the things which it can make best and ex¬ 
changing its goods for those made by some other country. 
Railroads, steamships, airplanes, telegraphs, and telephones 
are helping in the exchange of goods through all parts of 
the world. No matter how many miles separate us from 
other people, we no longer live apart. The people of all 
nations need one another. 

To Understand the Work of the World, Read On! 

We are living in an interesting time, but because work is 
so divided between city and country, between nation and 
nation, few of us see with our own eyes how the earth pro¬ 
vides the things we need, and how the workers prepare these 
things for our use. The rest of this book will tell you more 
about the world of today, so that you will see in your mind's 



60 WORKING TOGETHER: PAST AND PRESENT 


eye how man’s present ways of doing things grew out of the 
past, how people live, and how they work to obtain from 
the earth the things which they need. 

Questions to Answer 

1. What is a tropical country? 

2. What nations of the earth lie in the tropical regions? 

3. Where are the temperate zones? 

4. Which of the zones do you live in? 

5. Name the strongest nations of the world. 

6. Find them on the map of the world and on the globe. 

7. What does it mean to ‘ exchange goods ’ ? 

8. Tell in your own words what you learned in this chapter. 




PART III 


FEEDING THE WORLD 

CHAPTER 

9. Why We Need Food 

10. How We Get Our Meat 

11. Milk, Cream, Butter, and Cheese 

12. Poultry and Eggs 

13. Food from the Sea 

14. Wheat and Other Grains 

15. A Basket of Plant Foods 

16. Water and Salt 








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Chapter 9 

WHY WE NEED FOOD 


Every day, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, 
we eat. We are hungry, and we must eat because our bodies 
need food. 

But why do our bodies need food? 

One reason is that food is fuel for our bodies, which are 
like engines. Day and night our hearts beat like pumps. 



Our lungs draw in air and then force it out again. During 
the day we run, we pull things, we carry things, we study. 

When our bodies work, they use up heat. Food is fuel to 
keep up this heat. 

A chauffeur who wants fuel for his automobile drives to a 
garage for gasoline. When our bodies need more fuel, we 

must go to the earth for fuel foods. 

63 











64 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


The fuel foods which we obtain from the earth are starch, 
sugar, and fat. Potatoes, bread, and cereals contain starch. 
Apples, honey, and grapes contain sugar. Meat, butter, 
and cream contain fat. When we eat these fuel foods, they 
supply the heat which our bodies need for their work. 

There are other reasons why we need food. 

Food helps to repair our bodies. It also helps them to 
grow. 



All through our bodies there are life cells which are so small 
that they cannot be seen by the naked eye. But' when we 
look at a drop of blood or a piece of skin through a micro¬ 
scope, we can see these cells. While our bodies are working, 
these cells are being worn out. 

When the parts in an automobile engine wear out, the 
chauffeur takes the car to a garage. The garage mechanic 
mends the old parts or puts in new parts. When our bodies 
need repair, we must go to the earth for repair foods which 
have life cells in them. The life cells which are in the repair 
foods help to mend the old cells in our bodies or furnish us 








WHY WE NEED FOOD 


65 


with new cells for our skin and blood, our meat and flesh 
and bone. The part of our food which contains these life 
cells is called protein. 

Lean meat, milk, fish, cheese, eggs, nuts, and vegetables 
are repair foods. They contain protein. Some of these 
foods also contain sugar, starch, or fat. 

Many foods which we eat contain minerals, such as cal¬ 
cium, lime, iron, and salt. The body needs these minerals 

Th€se foods also contain vitamins. 



MINERAL FOODS 


as part of its food. Minerals help in the growth and repair 
of the body. 

Some foods which we eat contain tiny amounts of certain 
substances known as vitamins. These vitamins are found 
in many foods, but especially in green, leafy vegetables, 
fresh fruits, milk, and in whole-grain cereals. Scientists tell 
us that it is important for us to eat foods which contain 
vitamins. 


Water 


Every food that we eat contains some water. But this is 
not enough water for our bodies. We need to drink water 













66 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


freely both with our meals and between meals. Plenty of 
water will help to keep us well. Without water, our bodies 
cannot get the whole value of the rest of our food. 

What We Should Eat 

Until a short time ago most people believed that by eating 
a great deal of food, they would be sure to satisfy their 
bodies. But during the last few years people have learned 
that what we eat is more important than how much we eat. 
We must know how to choose foods so that our bodies get 
fuels for their work and protein for repairing old cells and 
building new ones. 

For boys and girls who are still growing, eating the right 
foods is especially important. 

Boys and girls should eat plenty of fat, especially the fat 
in milk, butter, cream, fish, and eggs. 

Boys and girls should have plenty of sugar and starch in 
their meals. They can get starch by eating bread, cereals, 
potatoes, beans, peas, and some other green vegetables. 
They can get sugar from honey, fruits, and milk. They 
should not eat much table sugar or candy. 

Fuel foods should make up the larger part of a day’s meals. 
But a good portion of each meal should be the repair foods 
which furnish new life cells to help the boy and girl in their 
growing. 

For proteins the boy and girl should be sure to drink much 
milk every day. Cheese, fish, and meat will add to their 
supply of proteins. 




WHY WE NEED FOOD 


67 


Boys and girls must have foods which contain minerals. 
Milk will supply them with calcium and lime, two minerals 
needed for their bones and teeth. Fruits and some vege¬ 
tables, such as tomatoes, will add iron, which their blood 
needs. 

Every boy and girl should eat some green leafy vegetables, 
such as cabbage, celery, spinach, and lettuce. These contain 
minerals and life cells which our bodies need. The water in 
which any vegetable has been cooked should not be thrown 
away. It is rich in minerals and should be served as part of 
the meal. Children should also eat these foods because they 
contain vitamins. 


Foods of Other Lands 

We have read about the foods which people in this country 
eat. Let us see what foods people in other lands have for 
their meals. 

Out on the deserts in Africa and in Arabia, where few 
animals live and few plants grow, people drink camel’s milk. 
Here and there on the deserts there are green spots called 
oases. In an oasis water flows and the date palm grows. 
The desert people eat dates from their palm trees. 

In the moist tropical jungles there are many wild plants 
bearing fruits and nuts which are good to eat. The jungle 
people eat bananas, coconuts, and many tropical vegetables. 
They also eat fish which they catch in their rivers. 

In the cold Arctic lands, the Eskimos hunt the walrus, the 
seal, the caribou, and the white bear for meat. They catch 



68 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


fish in the icy waters. The Eskimos have few plant foods 
to give them sugar and starch for fuel, but they make up for 
this lack by eating great quantities of fat. 

In the tropical jungles and in the cold Arctic countries, 
people get their food from wild plants and wild animals, but 
we get most of our food from animals and plants which are 
raised for us on farms. 

Long ago men had to be contented with such foods as 
could be found or cultivated near their own homes, but 
nowadays foods can be shipped great distances to many 
parts of the world. 

The United States ships wheat to many countries of 
Europe. We buy coffee from South America and tea from 
Japan. Great Britain buys much of the food used by her 
people from other countries, even from far-away Australia. 

Since man has invented methods of preserving foods, it is 
possible for many countries of the world to exchange food 
products with other countries. In this way a great world 
trade in foodstuffs has been built up. 

Questions to Answer 

1. In this chapter you learned why your body needs so many 
different kinds of food. Can you name some of them? 

2. Can you name some of the foods that we buy from other 
countries? Why do we have to buy them? 

3. Can you name some of the foods that we sell to other 
countries? Why do we sell them? 




Chapter 10 

HOW WE GET OUR MEAT 

When we want to eat meat, we do not have to go out to 
hunt wild animals as the cave men did. Where we live, man 
no longer lives by hunting. In the woods near our homes, 
rabbits, hares, and squirrels may live, but there are not 
enough of them to feed us all. 

Getting Meat in Wilderness Days 

Before the white men came to this country, the Indians 
who lived here hunted bear and deer and ate their flesh. 
Out on the plains west of the Mississippi River the Indians 
hunted buffalo. 

When the white men first came to America to live, they 
also hunted wild animals for meat. But before long they 
brought over from Europe sheep, cattle, and hogs, such as 
farmers in Europe had been raising for a long time. 

Now, when the white men had these animals, they were 
able to get beef from their cattle; mutton from their sheep; 
ham, bacon, and pork from their hogs. 

For a long time the white people kept on spreading across 
the country, turning the wilderness into farms and cities. 
As they cleared away the forests, many of the wild animals 
disappeared. The farmers, therefore, were glad to have the 

meat from their cows, sheep, and hogs. They ate some of 

69 


70 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


this meat themselves. The rest they sold to the people in 
the cities. 

Meat for the Cities Today 

Within the last fifty years the cities have grown large, and 
the small farms in certain sections of our country are no 
longer able to supply all the people in the cities with meat. 
So today we get most of our meat from a few parts of the 
country, where millions of cattle, sheep, and hogs can be 
raised and fed more easily than anywhere else. 

We get much of our beef, lamb, and mutton from the 
pasture lands in the western and southwestern part of the 
country. For ages, buffalo lived on these plains. But when 
the Indian hunters and the white men killed off the buffalo, 
herdsmen began to raise sheep and cattle. They raised their 
herds on large tracts of land called ranches. 

Meat from the Ranch 

The rancher, who owns the ranch, may have many thou¬ 
sands of cattle or sheep. A cattle rancher has cowboys to 
help him with his herd. The cowboys water the cattle. 
They take care of injured or diseased animals. They 
‘break’ the horses for riding, and conduct the ‘round-up.’ 

Each ranch owner must know his own cattle. There are 
several ways of marking cattle so that no mistake will be 
made when the herd is sold. The most common method 
of marking them is called branding. Each owner has his 
own initials or symbols, which are burned into the hide of the 
animal. These initials are registered in the official books of 





HOW WE GET OUR MEAT 


71 


the state, so that no other owner can adopt the same mark 
or claim cattle branded with it. 

When the time comes to sell the cattle, the cowboys go 
out for the round-up of the animals, which have been running 
over the great plains. On these plains the soil is not fertile, 
and there is not enough rainfall to raise crops; but even with 
little rainfall, wild grass grows readily, and it is on this wild 
grass that the cattle have been grazing. Surrounding the 
cattle from all sides, the cowboys pick out the ones which 
are marked with the brand of their ranch and drive them 
all into a great yard, or corral. 

From this corral the cattle are driven to the railroad 
station. Here they are loaded on trains and sent to one of 
the meat-packing cities, where meat is packed and made 
ready for shipment to all parts of the country. Chicago and 
Kansas City are two important meat-packing cities. 

On the same train with the cattle there may be many cars 
of sheep sent from the sheep ranches which are near the 
cattle ranches. 

When the sheep and cattle reach the packing cities, they 
are unloaded in large stockyards. 

Meat from the Corn Belt 

In the stockyards there are also thousands of hogs which 
have come from the farming plains in the states which lie 
near the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes lie between the 
United States and Canada. This part of our country is called 
the corn belt, because on these plains where rain is plentiful. 



72 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


the soil rich, and the summer long, corn grows well. As 
hogs get fat on corn, the farmers in the corn belt raise many 
hogs. As cattle also like corn, many young cattle from the 
western ranches are shipped to the corn belt for fattening. 

In the summer and fall the farmers in the corn belt feed 
their hogs and cattle fresh corn from the fields. Green corn 
is stored in corncribs for hogs; fodder corn is grown for 
winter food for cattle. Harvesting and storing this winter 
food is one of the most important tasks of the autumn 
season. A corn-harvesting machine goes through the field 
of corn, cutting and binding the stalks into bundles. These 
are chopped up and stored in a building called a silo. 

A man feeds a bundle of cornstalks and leaves into a rotat¬ 
ing set of knives which cut it into pieces. These pieces are 
either blown through a chute into the silo or are carried into 
it on a belt. 

The silo is usually built as part of the barn. A silo is a 
building shaped like a cylinder. I am sure you have noticed 
silos when you have been driving through the country. If 
you have driven through farm country in the early autumn, 
you may have seen the farmers busy filling their silos with 
winter food for their cattle. 

Cattle which have been shipped to the corn belt for fatten¬ 
ing are sent, when ready for market, to the stockyards. 
From the stockyards the cattle, the sheep, and the hogs go 
to the slaughterhouses^ where they are killed and prepared 
for packing. Almost every part of these animals is put to 
some use. 





HOW WE GET OUR MEAT 


73 


Preparing Meat for Market 

Some of the meat is hung in large cold-storage plants ready 
to be put on trains and sent to the cities to be sold in meat 
markets. Some is used for making sausage. Some is salted 
or smoked so that it will keep for a long time. Some is pre¬ 
served and put into cans which are sealed tightly. The hides 
of the animals are sold for leather; the horns of the cattle 
and sheep are used for button-making; hoofs are used in 
making glue. 

The meat is put into cold-storage rooms. Here cold air 
is run through pipes, and the cold pipes make the rooms like 
ice boxes. Meat stored in these cold rooms will remain fresh 
for months. 

The refrigerator trains which carry fresh meat to the cities 
are cooled by ice or pipes in the same way as the cold storage 
rooms are cooled. 

Every morning the refrigerator trains which come into 
the railroad stations near our homes bring fresh meat from 
packing houses. The butcher’s wagon gets the meat and 
carries it to the store where we buy it by the pound as we 
need it. At the grocer’s we can buy canned meat. 

The meat which we buy may have been raised fifteen 
hundred miles from our homes. Ranchers, cowboys, sheep 
herders, farmers, trainmen, and hundreds of workers in the 
stockyards and in the packing houses have helped in bringing 
that meat to us. Some meat makes a longer journey than 
fifteen hundred miles before it gets to market. 




74 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


Exporting and Importing Meats 

In England there are forty million people. Many of these 
people live in cities and work in factories. The farms are 
few and small. As there is little room to raise great herds 
of sheep and cattle, the English people buy, or import, much 
of their meat from other countries. When one country buys 
things from another country, we say that it is importing. 
When a coimtry sells things to another country, we say that 
it is exporting. 

England imports meat from the United States, from South 
America, and from Australia. Both in South America and 
in Australia large herds of sheep and cattle are raised on 
plains of wild grass. 

As these countries have not many people to feed, they are 
able to sell, or export, much meat. The meat exported from 
South America to England travels five thousand miles to 
reach its market. The meat exported from Australia to Eng¬ 
land is brought in ships over a distance of twelve thousand 
miles. 

Questions to Answer 

1. What is the difference between the way the cave man got 
his food and the way we get ours? 

2. Where does the meat which your mother buys at the 
market come from? 

3. Can you describe life on a cattle ranch? 

4. What is a round-up? 

5. How does the owner of a ranch know his own cattle? 

6. What does the cowboy do on the ranch? 





HOW WE GET OUR MEAT 


75 


7. What kind of food does the ranch owner give his cattle? 
Where does he get the food? 

8. What did you learn about England, Australia, and South 
America? 

Things to Do 

1. Construct a ranch on the sand table in your classroom. 

2. Draw a picture of a ranch. 

3. Draw a picture of a round-up. 

4. Draw a picture of a mark that might be used to mark all 
the cattle in one herd. 

5. Draw a picture of a stockyard. 

6. Copy the words and phrases in the list below. Write 
the meaning of each one on the line opposite the words. 

branding _ 

silo _ . 

stockyard __ 

diseased cattle _ 

corral _ 

refrigerator _ 

7. Find the Great Lakes on your map of North America. 

8. Find, on the map of the United States, the states in which 
cattle-raising is carried on. 

9. Find, on the map of the world and on the globe, Australia, 
South America, England. 











Chapter 11 

MILK, CREAM, BUTTER, AND CHEESE 

Milk is a good food. It quenches our thirst and satisfies 
our hunger. Milk contains sugar and fat, which are fuels 
for our bodies. Milk is rich in proteins, which help mend our 
body cells. Milk also helps us grow. For little babies, milk 
is a most necessary food. 

In the last story we read about the cattle ranches, where 
cows are raised for meat. But how about the cows which 
give us our daily milk? Do they live out on the cattle 
ranches? 

Many cows are raised on large dairy farms which are 
scattered throughout the middle western and middle Atlantic 
states and New England. 

Cows Brought to America 

The best milk cows are known as Holsteins, Ayrshires, 
Jerseys, and Guernseys. The first Holsteins were brought 
to this country from Holland; the Ayrshires came from Scot¬ 
land; the Jerseys came from the island of Jersey, which is 
near France. The first Guernsey cattle came here from the 
island of Guernsey, which is near the island of Jersey. 

Can you imagine the old sea captains and sailors bringing 
these cows across the Atlantic? For the few weeks on the 

76 


MILK, CREAM, BUTTER, AND CHEESE 77 


ocean the captain and his mates had good milk to drink. 
Then when they reached America, they sold the cows to 
American farmers, who turned them loose on their pasture 
lands. 

Today the descendants of those seafaring cows are giving 
us milk. 

Visiting a Dairy Farm 

If we arrive at a dairy farm early on a summer morning, 
we see the farmer letting the cows out of the large barn 
where they have been milked. The cattle follow their leader 
up the road, across the brook to the pasture, where fresh 
green grass is growing. There they eat the grass for an hour 
or so. This grass goes down into one of their four stomachs. 
Then as the day grows warmer, the cattle lie down in the 
shade, bring up the grass which they have swallowed, and 
chew this cud. After an hour or more of chewing, they 
swallow the cud, and it goes into their other stomachs. In 
these three stomachs part of the grass which they have 
eaten is turned into good rich milk. 

In the evening the farmer drives his cattle back into the 
barn, where he milks them. In the early morning they are 
milked again. Often cows have so much milk that the farmer 
has to milk them three or four times a day. On all the large 
dairy farms the milking is no longer done by hand, but by 
milking machines. 

Until a few years ago many farmers did not keep their 
barns as clean as they do now. The dairy farmer of today 
knows how important it is for him to keep his cows and 




78 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


his stables clean. In many large dairies where milk com¬ 
mands a high price, all employees are dressed in clean white 
clothing while working about the cows. Every morning 
the stalls are thoroughly washed by a hose playing water on 
the cement floors. Before a cow is milked, she is carefully 
washed. 

Milking is done by machines which are highly sanitary. 
The milking machines are covered to keep the milk free 
from dust and dirt. You can see why machine-milking is 
cleaner than milking by hand into open pails. 

Milking machines also save labor, for most of these 
machines milk two cows at once. One man caring for two 
machines can milk four cows in less time than he can milk 
one by hand. 

Milk readily absorbs odors. Good dairy farmers have 
their milk houses apart from the other farm buildings. The 
milk house has a cooling tank, so that the temperature may 
be cool enough to keep the milk sweet. Most milk houses 
have cement floors and are carefully screened to prevent flies 
from coming into them. 

When the weather permits, the milk utensils are placed 
outside, so that the sun’s rays and the fresh air may help to 
purify them. 

What does the cow eat in the fall and winter when there 
is no grass in the pasture? In these seasons the farmer keeps 
his cattle in the barn and feeds them on hay, which is dry 
grass. He raises this grass in the summer, gathers it, and 
stores it in the hay barn. He also feeds his cattle the stalks 




MILK, CREAM, BUTTER, AND CHEESE 79 


of corn which he has stored in the tall silo beside his cow 
barn. 

Bringing Milk to the City 

Each day the farmer puts his milk into cans. Instead 
of carrying his few cans of milk to the city, which may be a 
day's journey from his farm, the farmer sells his milk to a 
milk company. 

Each day the milk company sends trucks to gather the 
cans of milk from many farms. Then the company sends 
the milk to the city by train or truck. In the city some of 
the milk is sold to grocers in cans. The milk is also sold in 
quart and pint bottles, marked with labels. 

Clean milk bottles are necessary to keep milk in a clean 
condition. They are washed in large washing machines, 
brushed inside and out with brushes, and rinsed with clean, 
sterile water. 

The milk bottles are carried on trucks to the machines 
which fill them with milk. Some of these machines fill as 
many as eight dozen bottles a minute, filling and capping 
them without the help of human hands. 

Bottles of milk that are shipped on trains are packed in 
boxes, surrounded by chipped ice, and placed in refrigerator 
cars. 

Sometimes milk is shipped in bulk instead of in small 
quantities. It is cooled and placed in large tanks with double 
walls very much like the thermos bottle in which your mother 
takes hot coffee or iced tea when you go to the woods on a 
picnic. 



80 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


Keeping Milk Pure 

On some of the bottle caps we can read the word pasteur¬ 
ized. This means that the milk has been heated to a temper¬ 
ature of 150 degrees and has been kept at this temperature 
for twenty minutes, then rapidly cooled. This method of 
making milk pure was discovered by a Frenchman whose 
name was Louis Pasteur. The word pasteurized comes from 
his name. 

The company pasteurizes some of its milk because the 
heat kills little plants called bacteria, which live in milk. 
These bacteria are so small that you cannot see them without 
a microscope. But if they are not killed the milk spoils 
more quickly. 

Foods Made from Milk 

Did you ever read the poem which Robert Louis Steven¬ 
son wrote about a cow? 

The friendly cow all red and white 
I love with all my heart; 

She gives us milk with all her might 
To eat with apple tart. 

The cow also provides us with cream, butter, and cheese. 
We get the cream, butter, and cheese from the cow’s milk. 
If milk is allowed to stand for several hours, cream will rise 
to the top, or the cream can be separated from the milk 
more quickly by machine separators. That part of the milk 
which is left is called skim milk. IVIany people like .cream 





MILK, CREAM, BUTTER, AND CHEESE 81 


with fruit or cereals. Almost everybody likes ice cream, 
which is sweetened cream made stiff by freezing. 

Butter is made from the fatty part of the cream. Butter 
can be made in a small hand churn by pounding the cream 
with a wooden dasher. This pounding separates the butter 
fat from the rest of the cream. The part of the cream which 
is left is called buttermilk. Today most of the butter in our 
country is made in large machine churns which make hun¬ 
dreds of pounds in one churning. Some of this butter is 
sent to the cities in tubs. Some is weighed and wrapped in 
small packages. In one of these two ways it reaches the 
city grocer. 

Cheese is made from the protein which is in milk. This 
milky protein is called casein. Some farmers who do not 
sell their milk to milk factories, sell it to cheese factories. 
Here the milk is heated in vats; and as it sours, it divides 
into two parts: curds, which contain the casein, and whey. 
The curd is made into cheese. The farmers carry the whey 
back to their farms and feed it to their chickens and hogs. 

Thus you see that the cow gives man not only meat but 
also milk, cream, butter, and cheese. 

Questions to Answer 

1. Where are the great dairy farms of the United States? 

2. Can you name the different kinds of cows that are bred 
in America? 

3. Can you name the native lands of these different cows? 

4. How is milk pasteurized? Why do dairymen pasteurize 
the milk? 

5. What other foods are made from milk and cream? 




82 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


Things to Do 

1. Find, on your map of the United States, the states where 
the great dairy farms are located. 

2. Imagine you are spending a day on a dairy farm; write 
a story about the day. 

3. Tell how the dairymen prepare milk for the market. 





Chapter 12 

POULTRY AND EGGS 

Every morning at breakfast time, in many homes through¬ 
out our land, people eat eggs. 

To supply our tables with eggs, thousands of poultrymen 
and farmers raise chickens on their farms. 

The chicken is a bird which has been tamed by man. 

In our country today, there are many wild birds, such as 
the robin, the owl, the hawk, and the eagle. Some of these 
birds live with us all the year round. Other birds, lik*e the 
wild goose, the wild duck, and the wild turkey, fly southward 
in the winter to find themselves new homes in warmer lands. 
The wild turkey has almost disappeared from our land. 

All the birds of the air were originally wild, building their 
own nests, fighting their own battles, finding their own food, 
and flying where they wished. But long ago, after men 
tamed cattle and sheep, they tamed some of the birds as 
well. They tamed the goose, the duck, the turkey, and the 
chicken. 

These birds which men have tamed and which they raise 
for food are called poultry. A farm where they are raised is 
called a poultry farm. 

The story of each of the poultry birds is interesting. 


83 


84 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


The Story of the Chicken 

Far away in tropical India there is a bird called the jungle 
bird, which is really a wild chicken. This jungle bird lays 
about four eggs a year. Thousands of years ago some people 
in Asia succeeded in taming one variety of wild chicken, 
which may have been much like the jungle bird. 

While the jungle bird, itself, remained wild, farmers in 
Persia, India, and China raised on their farms the chickens 
that had been tamed. The chickens crowed in the barn¬ 
yards; they roosted in trees; they ate such scraps of food 
as the farmers threw to them. The barnyard hens laid more 
eggs than the wild jungle birds from which they came. 
Later the farmers in Europe also learned how to raise these 
chickens. 

When farmers came from Europe to this country, they 
brought chickens with them and raised them here. The 
farmers and their families ate some of the eggs which the 
hens laid. They sold some eggs to people in the towns. 
They allowed the mother hens to sit upon the rest of the 
eggs for twenty-one days. It takes a chick that long to be 
hatched from an egg. 

Today the small farm can no longer raise enough chickens 
to supply the people of our great cities with fowl and eggs. 
There are now large farms where as many as fifty thousand 
chickens can be raised at one time. 




POULTRY AND EGGS 


85 


Visiting a Chicken Farm 

First we visit the incubator house, where heaters are used 
to hatch the baby chicks. The boys from the farm are 
arriving with baskets full of eggs which they have gathered 
that day. We follow them into the house. We see them put 



The Chicken Farm 


the eggs into trays. Then they put the trays into incubators 
which hold thousands of eggs. 

The heaters in the incubators will keep the eggs warm for 
twenty-one days. At the end of that time when the boys 
remove the trays, they will find that the chicks have broken 
through the egg shells. 

The chicks are then put into brooders. These brooders 














86 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


are small houses where little stoves keep the chicks warm. 
They are carefully fed and grow rapidly. 

On the farms there are many laying houses, each holding 
hundreds of hens. Here the hens lay their eggs. Today 
there are many hens which lay more than two hundred eggs 
a year. Some hens even lay three hundred eggs each in one 
year. 

So we see that the egg which we eat for breakfast has an 
interesting story. The story begins somewhere in Asia with 
a relative of the wild jungle bird of India. Then the story 
comes into Europe and carries us across the ocean to America. 

In America there are also large duck farms, large goose 
farms, and large turkey farms. 

These poultry farms of America add to our supply of food. 
But there is a way in which even wild birds help to feed 
us. 


How Wild Birds Help Us 

Many of the wild birds feed on insects. Many insects 
feed on growing grains, vegetables, fruit trees, and other 
plants which give us food. The birds which eat these in¬ 
sects save a large part of the farmers’ crops. 

Many birds feed on seeds. In the past, when farmers saw 
birds eating grains, their first thought was to shoot them. 
But today we know that birds which eat seed really help the 
farmers. During the spring they eat many seeds of useless 
weeds and in this way they make it easier for the farmer to 
raise his crops. 






POULTRY AND EGGS 


87 


Questions to Answer 

1. What is an incubator? What is a brooder? 

2. In what ways are birds a help to the farmer? 

3. In what parts of the world did men first develop chicken 
farms? 

4. Why is chicken farming an important occupation? 

5. Can you figure how many dollars a farmer might get 
from selling the eggs that one good hen lays in one year? 

6. Does the farmer have to buy food for his hens? 




Chapter 13 

FOOD FROM THE SEA 

Long ago in the days when men lived by hunting, they 
learned that some fish are as good to eat as some land ani¬ 
mals. So they caught fish as best they could and ate them. 
Once they knew how to make them, they used small nets 
with which they caught their fish. When they learned how to 
make boats, they went out in boats to fish in the rivers and 
in the lakes. Later, when they learned how to build ocean 
boats, they sailed on the ocean to catch ocean fish. 

Now all over the world people eat fish. If they cannot get 
fresh fish, they buy dried, smoked, or canned fish. 


The Fish We Eat 

There are many different kinds of fish, but the ones which 
people in this country eat most often are cod, haddock, 
mackerel, halibut, herring, whitefish, and salmon. Cod, 
haddock, mackerel, halibut, and herring live in the ocean. 
Whitefish are found in the Great Lakes. Salmon are hatched 
in rivers, but they live much of their lives in the ocean. 
When salmon are ready to lay their eggs, they return to the 
rivers in which they were hatched. They swim up the rivers, 

leaping the falls to reach the shallow waters where they lay 

88 


FOOD FROM THE SEA 


89 


their eggs. In the western part of the United States there 
are a few great rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean. Each 
autumn salmon come up these rivers from the ocean, and 
here fishermen catch them. 

Along the bottom of the oceans there are valleys, moun¬ 
tains, and plains, just as on dry land. Fish are usually 
found in greatest numbers over the shoals, or shallow places, 
where the ocean bottom lies only a little way, perhaps fifty to 
six hundred feet, below the surface of the waves. Here sea 
plants grow; small fish feed on the sea plants; and large fish 
feed on the smaller fish. These shallow places where fish 
are abundant are called fishing banks. 

Catching the Fish 

Few of us ever think, when we eat fish, that there are tens 
of thousands of fishermen all over the world who spend their 
lives in getting us this food. 

Let us see a few of the ways in which fishermen catch fish 
for us. 

Boys who live in the country near brooks or rivers often 
fish with poles, lines, and hooks, on which they, put small fish 
or worms for bait. In some lands fishermen catch fish by 
spearing them or by harpooning them with spears tied to 
ropes. But fish poles, spears, and harpoons cannot catch 
enough fish for the hundreds of millions of people who live 
in the world. Most fish are caught by other means. 

To catch many fish at one time, men use nets made of 
strong cord knotted or woven together in such a way as to 



90 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


leave open meshes. These nets are made in different sizes. 
There are nets so small that men can manage them by hand. 
There are nets so large and heavy that they have to be 
lowered and raised by steam power. 

When steamboats carrying large nets reach the fishing 
banks, each boat lowers its net into the water. Weighted 
wooden beams help the net to sink; then, as the ship moves 
through the water, the net slowly closes on the fish which are 
swimming in its path. Small fish escape through the meshes, 
but the big fish are prisoners; and when the net is raised, 
they are emptied into tanks in the hold of the boat. 

Another way to catch fish is by the use of long lines to 
which many smaller lines with baited hooks are attached. 
This kind of fishing is usually done from sailships. 

Three times a day fishermen leave these sailships in small 
dories. In each dory there are two kegs containing the line. 
One man rows the dory; the other slowly lets out the lines, 
which may be a mile long. While he is still lowering the 
line, he can feel the weight of the fish which are being caught 
on the baited hooks. The kegs which have been thrown 
overboard serve as buoys, supporting the long line which 
grows heavier and heavier with its increasing load of fish. 

After a time the rower guides the dory back along the line. 
The fish are removed. The hooks on the short lines are 
freshly baited and thrown back into the water. Then the 
men row back to their ships to unload. 

Going out in a dory is dangerous business. The waves 
are often high and rough. If a fog rises, the men have to 





FOOD FROM THE SEA 


91 


listen for the ship’s fog horn to help them find their way 
back. If the wind is against them, so that they cannot hear 
the fog horn, they may lose their ships. Many a dory has 
drifted on the ocean for days before being picked up. 

In the winter, even when all goes well, the men must face 
bitter cold. The fishing boats return to port covered with 
ice. 

Bringing Fish to Market 

To catch fish is not enough. Fish spoil easily, and if we 
are to have them for food, they must be kept from spoiling. 
Some fish are packed in ice in the hold of the ship. When the 
ship reaches port, they are repacked and sent to the fish 
stores near our homes where we can buy them fresh. Some 
fish are salted, because salt helps to keep them from spoiling. 
Codfish are laid out to dry on land. A good many of the 
salmon which are caught in the rivers near the western 
coast are dried and smoked. Smoked fish, as well as salted 
fish, will keep a long time. A great number of the salmon 
are taken to factories where machinery cuts them and packs 
them in air-tight cans. 

Most of our ships which catch fish in the Atlantic Ocean 
sail from a few coast cities in the part of our country which 
is called New England. Each of these cities sends out fleets 
of fishing vessels. These vessels do much of their fishing on 
the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. On the 
Grand Banks there are fleets of fishing boats from France 
which stay for six months and more. On the other hand, 
some of our fishing boats cross the ocean to catch fish in 





92 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


waters off the coast of Iceland, Greenland, and Ireland. 
The largest of these fleets sails from the city of Boston. 

Fishing is carried on in the Great Lakes in much the same 
manner as on the ocean. Nets and baited hooks bring in 
quantities of lake trout, whiteflsh, lake herring, and blue 
pike. 

The countries which face the oceans claim the water for 
three miles from their coast lines as their own Ashing grounds. 
But outside of this three-mile limit, the oceans are free to the 
fishermen of the world. 


Oysters 

Oysters, which are shellfish, grow in shallow water, known 
as oyster banks, off the coast of the United States in many 
places. The states of Maryland and Virginia lead all other 
states in oyster fishing. The flesh of the oyster is enjoyed 
both fresh and canned, and the shells are ground up and fed 
to chickens to furnish them with certain minerals which they 
need. 


Protecting Our Supply of Fish 
Of late years, some men in our country have been giving 
much thought to fish. There are states which have fish 
hatcheries, where fish are kept in pools and fed. Fish eggs 
and baby fish from the hatcheries are put into the state 
rivers and lakes to keep them well stocked. 

Fish in the lakes and streams of our country are protected 
by laws called game laws. These laws keep people from fish- 




FOOD FROM THE SEA 


93 


ing at times when the fish are laying eggs or raising their 
young. They also make it unlawful to catch fish which are 
too small. 

Some nations have joined together to study ocean fishing, 
so that the ocean fish will not be destroyed. They are 
planning that their fishermen shall not fish during the time 
when mother fish are laying eggs from which the oceans will 
renew their treasure. 

So we see that today the oceans which help to carry man 
from land to land are binding men in other ways as well. 
Because the oceans’ harvest of fish helps to feed them, the 
nations are joining hands as brothers to protect the food 
which they must share. 


Things to Do 

1. Make a collection of pictures showing all the kinds of fish 
you read about in this chapter. 

2. Make some drawings of the many kinds of fish. 

3. Make a set of drawings showing the different ways men 
catch fish. 

4. On an outline map'of North America color the sections 
where fishing is carried on. If you do not remember, read the 
chapter again. 

5. Arrange a spelling contest in your class. Use the list of 


words below. 

mackerel 

codfish 

harpoon 

fisherman 

halibut 

valley 

dory 

fisheries 

herring 

coast 

pole 

factories 

haddock 

mountain 

shoals 

vessels 

salmon 

spear 

buoy 

bait 




Chapter 14 

WHEAT AND OTHER GRAINS 

A loaf of bread is on the table. We shall eat bread with 
our lunch. We had bread toasted for breakfast. For dinner 
we may eat rolls, which are only another form of bread. 
Even our cakes and cookies and biscuits and the crusts of 
our pies are really bread. 

Bread: a Plant Food 

To make bread, white flour is mixed with water. Sugar, 
salt, yeast, and lard are added. This mixture is then kneaded 
by pounding and squeezing and then by more rolling and 
squeezing. Kneading the flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast, 
and lard together in this way gives us dough. 

The dough is then shaped into loaves and put into a warm 
place to rise. When it has risen, it is put into the oven and 
baked. After the loaves have cooled, the bread is sliced and 
placed on the table. 

This bread does not look much like a plant food, but bread 
is plant food. The flour used in making bread comes from 
the seed of a plant called wheat. Wheat is a grain. There 
are other plants, like rye, oats, barley, rice, and buckwheat, 
which are also grains. All these plants bear clusters of small 

seeds, or grains, each of which is packed in a hard little shell. 

94 


WHEAT AND OTHER GRAINS 


95 


Corn is also a grain, but the seeds of the corn plant are 
clustered on a long stick or cob. 

Bread can be made from the grains of rye, barley, and corn, 
as well as from grains of wheat. Our oatmeal is ground-up 



oats. Our buckwheat cakes are made from flour ground 
from the grains of the buckwheat plant. 

Wheat and some of the other grains are among the oldest 
plant foods in the world. Long ago men learned that some 
wild grains are good to eat. 

Many birds like to eat the kernels of the wild wheat seeds. 





















96 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


It may be that early man learned to eat wheat by watching 
the birds. 

In the beginning people ate the seeds of the wheat just as 
they found them on the plants. Next they learned to make 
a coarse flour by pounding the grains on a stone. By mixing 
this flour with water, they made a dough, which they baked 
on hot stones. 

Wheat-Farming in Ancient Times 

We have read that when people learned to plant seed, they 
became farmers. In the Valley of the Nile, the farmers of 
Egypt raised wheat six thousand years ago. 

When we go to the art museums in the large cities, we can 
see pictures of farming in old Egypt. These pictures were 
cut into stone by Egyptian artists, and they show us how 
the farmers of long ago raised wheat and prepared flour. 

In breaking up the earth to make it ready for planting, 
the farmers of Egypt used wooden plows. They had oxen 
draw the plows across the fields. They sowed the seed by 
hand; and when the wheat grew to its full height and the 
long stalks bore their precious grains, they cut the stalks 
with a sickle. The farmers bound the stalks by hand and 
carried them to bams, where they were laid on the floor. 
Here donkeys, by walking on the wheat, stamped the seeds 
loose from the stalks; at the same time they loosened 
the shells from the grains. This is called threshing the 
wheat. 

The next step was separating the shells from the grain. 




WHEAT AND OTHER GRAINS 


97 


This is called winnowing. The Egyptians winnowed their 
wheat by throwing the grain into the air with a pair of flat 
wooden tools. As the grain fell, a man fanned the air, so 
that the light shells, or husks, would blow away. 

How did the Egyptians make flour from this grain? They 
ground it between two round milling stones, placed one 
above the other. The lower stone was partly hollowed out. 
The upper stone had a hole in it. The grain pouring through 
this hole fell into the hollow space between the two stones. 
The flour maker turned the upper stone on the lower until 
the grains were crushed into a coarse flour. 

In time the farmers in other lands learned easier ways of 
grinding the wheat. In some places they had donkeys or 
oxen walk round and round in a circle to turn the upper mill¬ 
stone against the lower. Some farmers built themselves 
mills in which the millstones were turned by the power of 
falling water. Near the water mills, they built dams of stone 
or wood to hold back the water; at one point close to the 
mill they allowed the water to flow from the dam over 
buckets on to the blades of a mill wheel. The push and the 
weight of the water made the mill wheel go round. And as 
the wheel went round, it turned the upper millstone which 
was inside the mill. Here the farmers from the neighborhood 
could have their flour ground very quickly. Because of the 
great weight of the millstones, they could have their flour 
ground much finer. 

When the people came from Europe to make their homes 
in America, they brought grains of wheat with them, but 






98 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


their wheat did not grow well in the fields which they cleared 
near the Atlantic coast. Instead of wheat they ate corn. 

A New Grain Found in America 

Corn is an American grain which the Indians raised. The 
newcomers learned from the Indians how to plant corn and 
how to make good things to eat from the corn harvest. They 
ate johnny cake, which they made from commeal, a coarse 
corn flour. They ate succotash, a dish of corn and beans 
cooked together. They dried the kernels of the corn in the 
sun until they became almost as hard as stone. Then they 
kept these hard seeds into the winter, when they used them 
to make corn mush. They made corn mush by soaking the 
kernels overnight in water, then serving the softened seeds 
with milk. 

As the white people went west in this country, they found 
one part of the land where for more than one thousand miles 
there were good farming plains. Plenty of rain would help 
com and wheat to grow well there. This com and wheat belty 
as it is called, lies west of the Mississippi River and reaches 
almost to the Rocky Mountains. 

The farmers working with the old farm tools found that 
they could not do all the work themselves. They needed 
new tools which would do the farm work more quickly than 
the old tools, which had hardly changed since the days of the 
Egyptian farmers. 






WHEAT AND OTHER GRAINS 


99 


Machinery Brings New Ways of Farming 

New farming tools were invented by American inventors. 
About the year 1831 Cyrus H. McCormick, an American 
farmer, invented a reaper, a machine which could cut several 
acres of wheat in less time than a man with a hand tool could 
cut one. This reaper and other inventions helped the farmers 
on the great farming plains. 

Today on a large wheat field in the West the ground is 
plowed up by large steel gang plows, as they are called, drawn 
by teams of sixteen horses. On some farms the plows are 
drawn by tractors, run by gasoline or kerosene engines. 

After the blades of the plow have cut wide furrows in the 
soil, other machines, called harrows, are drawn across the 
fields to cut the furrows and smooth them. 

Then a machine with many steel drills is drawn across 
the field. These drills sow the seeds of wheat into the earth. 

In a few days pale green shoots, which look like grass, 
appear above the earth. The roots below the earth draw 
food and water from the soil. The leaves, helped by the 
sun, change the earth food into life cells for the growing 
plant. The wheat grows higher and higher. In a few months 
the tall stalks turn from green to yellow as they ripen. They 
bear heads of grain. 

The wheat is now gathered by a harvesting machine. The 
harvesting machine of today cuts the wheat, collects the 
stalks into bundles, ties the bundles, and drops them in rows. 

The bundles are then thrown into a threshing machine 




100 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


which is run by a steam engine. Inside the thresher the 
grains are separated from the dried stalks, or straw. The 
husks are loosened and blown away. As the grains of wheat 
flow from the thresher, they are packed in sacks. 

Even the grinding of the grain into flour is done by new 
tools. Railroads and steamships carry millions of bushels 



A Farming Plain 


of wheat from the wheat farms to the large cities where they 
are stored in tall buildings, called grain elevators. 

From the grain elevators the grain goes to the flour mills. 
Flour mills are still built near waterfalls, but the millstones 
are no longer turned directly by water wheels. They are 
turned by electric power engines which get their power from 
the falling water. One such electrically driven engine can 
help grind more flour than many of the old water wheels. 

Even the baking of bread from flour is now done by new 
tools. Few women bake bread in their own homes. They 
buy bread from large bakeries, where most of the work is 
done by machinery. 

New tools are also used in raising corn. Some green corn 
is sold to the cities, and then we eat the kernels from the 






WHEAT AND OTHER GRAINS 


101 


cob after boiling it or roasting it. Some of the green corn is 
sent to the canneries for canning. Much of the field corn 
raised in the corn belt is ground into corn flour, or corn meal, 
as it is generally called. The farmer also feeds corn to his 
cattle and hogs. In the winter he feeds his hogs dried ears 



Indians Gathering Wild Rice 


of corn from the corn crib. He feeds his cows cornstalks 
from the silo which stands beside his barn. 

In China the people hardly ever eat wheat or corn. They 
eat rice, which is another one of the grains. They raise this 
rice in flooded fields. Rice takes the place of bread for the 
Chinese. Rice is also grown in the United States. Not so 
many years ago American Indians in some parts of this 
country gathered wild rice to add to their food supply. The 
picture shown here is from the American Museum of Natural 
History. It shows clearly how the Indians gathered the 
wild rice by threshing. 




















102 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


So, just as the deep sea yields fish to feed us, the earth 
bears grains to add to our daily meals. In our country today, 
with new tools to help them, farmers working where grain 
grows best, raise more than enough to feed all the people. 
Giant flour mills grind the grains. Ships and trains carry 
our wheat, corn, and other grains to feed the workers in our 
own land and in many other lands which cannot raise enough 
for themselves. 

Questions to Answer 

1. How many kinds of grain are used to make bread? 

2. How did men in ancient times plant and harvest their 
grain? 

3. What American invented the first reaping machine? 

4. How is the farming of wheat carried on today? 

5. How is wheat ground into flour? 

6. How is bread made? 

Things to Do 

1. Make a set of pictures showing the ways men have used 
to grind grain into flour. 

2. Make a visit to a bakery, if there is one in your town. 

3. Write a few short paragraphs telling what you saw. 

4. Learn to spell the following words, and be very sure you 
know what each one means: 


bread 

buckwheat 

invention 

kerosene 

yeast 

wheat 

reaper 

engine 

flour 

kernel 

tractor 

threshing 

barley 

plow 

gasoline 

grain elevator 

dough 

• kneaded 

clustered 

harvesting 




Chapter 15 

A BASKET OF PLANT FOODS 

Here is a basket of food, brought in by the grocer’s boy. 
We stand by and watch while he unpacks vegetables, fruits, 
nuts, tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, sugar, pepper, all of which 
are plant foods. 

The grocery store is near by; but the basket with its 
bright colors and its fragrance is like a bouquet of food, 
gathered for us from many climates and from many lands. 

People who live in the country or in small towns often 
keep gardens in which they raise their own fruits and vege¬ 
tables. But in cities the yards are often not large enough 
for gardens, and people are too busy doing other work to 
spend their time raising foods. City people are busy making 
the many things that country people need, while country 
people are busy raising foods for city people. 

Indeed, people could not live in cities at all unless country 
people sold them fruits and vegetables and milk. 

You may like to know how farmers find a market for all 
the foods they raise. 

Fruits and Vegetables: Winter and Summer 

Many years ago they took their own fruits and vegetables 
to market. Often they carried them in wagons through the 

103 


104 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


streets of near-by towns, selling them from door to door. 
But nowadays farmers living near the same shipping point 
often belong to an organization which takes care of selling 
their farm products for them. 

Fruits and vegetables are assembled, packed, and stored 
by these organizations and sold by them to the stores from 
which your mothers may buy their food. 

In the winter, vegetables will not grow in the open in the 
northern states. For this reason, in the winter people in 
the North get most of their fresh vegetables from farms in 
the southern states where it is warm enough for vegetables 
to grow in the open all the year round. It is also possible 
to raise green vegetables in hothouses, under cover, in the 
North. These are much more expensive than those grown 
in the summer time, and not all people can afford to buy 
them. Today many people eat canned vegetables as well 
as fresh vegetables. 

So much for the vegetables which the grocer has sent us. 
See the luscious fruits which the basket holds. Here are 
apples and pears from the northern states, where the sum¬ 
mers are short. Here are grapes, grapefruit, raisins, oranges, 
from sunny groves in California, Florida, and other southern 
states where the summers are long. Each fruit grows best 
in the climate which suits it. When grown in that climate, 
it tastes best. 

With ships and trains to serve him, our grocer is able to 
sell us fruits from every corner of our land. He sells us fruits 
from other lands as well. In the basket there are dates from 





A BASKET OF PLANT FOODS 


105 


date palms which grow on the oases in the distant deserts of 
Arabia and North Africa. There is a pineapple which may 
have come from the Hawaiian Islands, far out in the Pacific 
Ocean. There are bananas, which grow in the countries of 
Central America and in Colombia, which is a country in 
South America. 

In these tropical lands which are washed by the waves of 
the Caribbean Sea bananas used to grow wild in jungles. 
Of late years men have been clearing away parts of the jungle 
to raise bananas on plantations. Bananas grow in large 
bunches, with each banana pointing upward. Before the 
fruit is fully ripe, the bunches are cut down. Fruit steamers 
bring the cargoes northward to us. 

Nuts: Another Plant Food 

Here are nuts; a bag of mixed nuts — walnuts, pecans, 
filberts, almonds, all of which grow in our country. But 
what is this? A coconut! Shake it! Hear the milk inside! 
This nut has come a long way. It may have grown on 
plantations in the Caribbean lands; or it may have grown 
on the South Sea Islands, far out in the Pacific Ocean. 

Still we are not through with the riches of our basket. 

Plants Which Flavor Our Drinks 

We open a small can of tea. A short while ago the tea 
leaves were growing on bushes in China or on the island of 
Ceylon, south of India. 

We open another package and we see coffee beans which 




106 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


may have come from the island of Java, near Ceylon; or 
it may have come from Brazil, a country in South America 
where much of the world’s coffee is grown. 

Another package contains cocoa, and near it there is a 
bar of chocolate. Cocoa and chocolate do not look like 
plant foods, but they are both made from the oily beans of 
the cacao plant, which grows in the tropical lands of South 
America. These beans grow in pods. In cocoa the oil of 
the cacao beans is still present. In chocolate the oil has 
been removed. The cocoa and the chocolate were made 
from cacao beans in factories in our country. 

Sugar from Cane or Beets 

To sweeten our cup of cocoa or chocolate, the grocer has 
sent us a box of granulated sugar. The white crystals of 
the sugar may have been made from sugar cane. Sugar 
cane is a plant which grows in Cuba, an island south of 
Florida. It also grows on the Hawaiian Islands, on the 
Philippine Islands, in some of our Southern states, and in 
other warm lands. Cuba raises so much cane sugar that it 
is sometimes called ‘the world’s sugar bowl.’ 

In Cuba, for centuries, men have been clearing jungles 
for the planting of sugar. In the spring, stalks of cane are 
cut up and the cuttings are planted. In about a year, the 
stalks are twelve feet high and bear long green leaves. The 
light and heat of the sun help these leaves to form a rich 
sweet sap which flows from the leaves into the fibers of the 
stalks. 





A BASKET OF PLANT FOODS 


107 


Many plants contain sugar. If we chew blades of grass or 
flower petals, we can taste the sugar in them. Sugar cane 
contains so much sugar that when the stalks are cut down 
and run through large crushing machines, every hundred 
pounds of stalk yields about eighty pounds of sugary sap. 
The water in the sap is boiled out; and as the sugar cools, it 
forms molasses and brown crystals. These crystals are 
‘raw’ sugar. 

The raw sugar is shipped from the mills near the planta¬ 
tions to sugar refineries in the United States, where, after 
more boiling and filtering, it forms white crystals which we 
eat as granulated sugar. In the sugar refineries these crystals 
are also made into powdered sugar, lump sugar, or pure 
brown sugar. 

Thus cane sugar comes to our basket to add flavor and 
fuel value to our meal. 

Table sugar is also made from the juice of the sugar beet 
which grows in Canada and in our own country in the western 
states and in the states near the Great Lakes. Many people 
like to eat a sugar which farmers make from the sap of the 
maple tree. 

Spices 

Now what is this, away down at the bottom of our basket? 
It is a small tin of black pepper. We turn the cap so that 
we can smell the spice. The pungent smell makes us sneeze. 

Sailors sailing toward Java, Ceylon, and other islands near 
India are greeted by fragrant winds. The winds blowing 
from plantations on the islands carry the sweet, sharp scents 





108 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


of pepper, cloves, and other spice plants to the ships 
at sea. 

When the sailors land at the docks near the plantations, 
cargoes of the spices are brought on board. Some of the 
ships carry their fragrant burdens back across the Pacific to 
San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and other cities on the 
western coast of the United States. Some come through the 
Panama Canal, a waterway which engineers from our coun¬ 
try have cut through Central America. In this way, the 
spice ships reach the Caribbean Sea. They can then come 
north to deliver their cargoes to Mobile, New Orleans, and 
other cities on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Or they can 
come still farther north to bring their spices to Charleston, 
Philadelphia, New York, Newark, Newport, Boston, and 
other cities which are built close to the Atlantic. From the 
coast cities, trains carry the spices to the inland cities and 
to the farms. 

So the basket from our grocer has many a story packed 
away in it. Each food plant was raised by workers in the 
climate which best suited it. Yet, as the boy unpacks the 
basket, it would seem as though the plantations, the orchards, 
the groves, the gardens of the world, all lie just outside our 
door. 

Questions to Answer 

1. Can you name , all the things that you found in that 
wonderful basket you have just read about? 

2. Can you tell where each kind of fruit came from? 

3. Do you remember where the many different kinds of 
nuts came from? 





A BASKET OF PLANT FOODS 


109 


4. Can you name and locate the American cities to which 
these came before reaching your grocer or fruit dealer? 

Things to Do 

1. Find on a map of the world all the places where the 
many wonderful things came from in the basket of plant foods 
you read about in this chapter. 

2. On an outline map of the world trace with a blue pencil 
the route traveled by a cargo of bananas coming from Central 
America to New York City; a cargo coming from Colombia 
in South America to Boston, Massachusetts. 

3. On the same outline map trace with a red pencil the 
routes traveled by sugar from Cuba to New York City; the 
route traveled by sugar from the Hawaiian Islands to New York 
City; from the Philippine Islands^to^San Francisco in Cali¬ 
fornia. 

4. Locate on your map the following places: Java, Ceylon, 
India, the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippine Islands, Colombia 
in South America, and Cuba. 

5. Locate on the same map of the world the American 
cities to which the many plant foods were sent. 

6. Look at your map again. Do you realize how much of 
the world was busy either sending or receiving the many foods 
in that basket?. 

7. Make a list of all the fruits you saw in the basket; all 
the vegetables; all the nuts. 

8. Make a collection of pictures showing each kind. 

9. Make a collection of pictures of the places where these 
plant foods were raised. 

10. Make a collection of pictures of the places where they 
were sent. 

11. Make a list of the names of these foods for your spelling 




no 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


lesson. Read the chapter again, so that you will not omit any 
important ones from your list. 

12. If you don’t know them, look up the meanings of these 
words: 

filtering granulated crystals refinery 





Chapter 16 

WATER AND SALT 

We have read of the foods which we get from plants. We 
have read of the foods which we get from animals. Now we 
shall read about salt and water, which are neither plant nor 
animal. They belong to the mineral department of the earth, 
which is our storehouse. 

Some Uses of Water 

Water helps us in many ways. We use water to bathe in. 
We use water for cleaning things. We use water to help us 
fight fire. But the thing for which we most need water is to 
quench our thirst. 

All living things must have water. Without water no 
plant can live. Without water no animal can live. Without 
water we cannot live. 

Fortunately there is a good deal of water in the world. 
Three quarters of the surface of the earth is covered by 
oceans. 

We cannot drink the ocean water directly. It is salty, 
and when we are thirsty we want to drink fresh water, not 
salty water. 

Yet much of the water which the people of the world drink, 

and the water which animals and plants drink, comes from the 

111 


112 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


ocean. The roundabout way in which the salty ocean water 
reaches people as drinking water makes an interesting story. 

The Story of a Drop of Ocean Water 

Each day some of the water on the surface of the ocean 
evaporates or, in other words, changes to vapor and mixes 
with the air. Water heated in a teakettle changes to vapor 
and mixes with the air. But water does ijot have to boil in 
order to evaporate. The air is like a sponge soaking up 
water vapor. Evaporation is going on wherever there is 
water for the air to soak up. That is why the wash on the 
clothesline gets dry. That is why the water in a dish placed 
on our window sill will disappear in a day or two. Air 
warmed by the sun will soak up more water vapor than cold 
air. When the moist ocean air rises, much of the vapor which 
the air has soaked up from the ocean changes to a fine mist. 
We see this mist as clouds. 

Clouds are also formed through the evaporation of the 
water in fields and forests and inland lakes. But we are 
following the drop of water which is in a cloud which rose 
from the ocean. This cloud is carried on and on by the 
winds until it reaches a continent, where it drifts over val¬ 
leys, plains, and mountains. 

When a cloud reaches a place where the air is cold, the 
mist changes to water and falls to the earth as rain. When 
clouds come to very cold places, like the high mountains, 
the mist freezes and forms little crystals which fall to the 
earth as snow. 




WATER AND SALT 


113 


If we take a cold plate and hold it above the spout of our 
teakettle, the vapor will change to drops of water as it strikes 
the plate. In winter the water vapor which is in the air in 
our warm rooms changes to ice crystals when it strikes 
the cold window. These facts help us to know how the 
cold air of the mountains changes cloud mist to rain or 
snow. 

When the rain from clouds falls on the mountains, much 
of the water sinks into the earth until it reaches a stony bed 
below. Then the water flows underground until it comes to a 
rocky place which blocks its course. Here it comes bubbling 
up through the earth as a spring. 

Some of the winter snow which falls on the hills and moun¬ 
tains is melted by the warm spring sun. Much of this water 
and also much rain water rolls down the sides of the hills 
and mountains in gurgling brooks. 

On their way downward, many small brooks meet and 
flow on together as larger brooks. Larger brooks meet and 
flow on together as rivers. Some of these rivers flow into 
inland lakes. Other rivers flow on and on through valleys 
and across plains until they come to the end of land, where 
they flow back into the ocean. 

In all countries where the climate is not too cold, the 
water from the clouds, flowing through the land as rivers, 
helps plants to grow well. There are some places, like the 
deserts, where it seldom rains and there are no rivers. Only 
plants which need little moisture can grow on the dry desert 
sands. Two such plants are the cactus and the sagebrush. 



114 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


which grow on the American desert in the southwestern part 
of the United States. 

Today men are trying to turn a portion of this desert into 
farm land by digging ditches which will lead the water from 
distant lakes and rivers into the hot dry sands. This way of 
bringing water to help in farming is called irrigation. 



Irrigation Makes Farm Land of the Desert 


Besides helping plants to grow, the water making its 
voyage in a cloud gives drink to man and beast. People who 
live in wild country get water from springs and brooks and 
rivers. In some countries, water boys riding donkeys fill 
small bags with drinking water from the springs. Then they 
go into the cities, where thirsty people pay them for a drink. 
In our country, a farmer who lives where there is no spring 
near the house must dig into the earth until he strikes water. 
This water is rain which has trickled down through the soil 













WATER AND SALT 


115 


from distant hills to the rocks below. So the farmer gets his 
well. From this well he either brings up water in buckets or 
draws it up with a pump. 

Bringing Water to the Cities 

In the cities there are not enough springs to give all people 
water. People have no wells outside their homes. Yet 
many times every day those of us who live in cities turn on 
faucets, and the water flows, as if by magic. It took much 
labor and much thought to bring us the water which flows 
so easily. In some cities the water comes from the rain 
which fell on the hills and mountains miles away. To bring 
this water to these cities, engineers have built great reser¬ 
voirs into which they have led the waters from the sur¬ 
rounding hills and mountains. These reservoirs are really 
artificial lakes which the engineers themselves have helped 
to form. Miles and miles of huge pipes lead the water from 
the reservoirs down to these cities. 

All through a city and underneath the city streets there 
are water pipes through which the water from the reservoir 
flows into people’s houses. Branch pipes lead this water 
from the main pipes in the streets into the cellars of houses. 
Pipes inside the houses lead the water from the cellars to the 
rooms above. This water supply is owned by the city. The 
owners of the houses pay the water department for the use 
of the water. This department uses the money to keep up 
the water supply. 

What a long voyage the drop of sea water which we saw 





116 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


started on its way has had to make from its home in the 
ocean, through its windswept journey in a cloud to the moun¬ 
tain where it fell as rain or snow, down the mountain side 



Bringing Water to Your Drinking Glass in the City 


into the reservoir, through the pipes, into your drinking 
glass! 

But why is it that this glass of water does not taste salty? 
The water was salty when it was in the ocean. Why it is not 
salty now? 

The answer is simple. 

How Salt Got into the Ocean 

When the sun shone down on the ocean and the water rose 
in a vapor to form mist and clouds, the salt was too heavy to 
rise. So the salt was left behind in the ocean. But this 






























WATER AND SALT 


117 


answer only raises another question. How did the salt get 
into the ocean? 

To begin with, we must remember that salt is a mineral 
which is part of the earth. There are places where rocks 
of salt lie on the surface of the earth. These places are called 
salt licks, because animals come to them to lick the salt which 
they need for food. But apart from these salt licks, there 
are small quantities of salt in much of the soil. 

The rivers which come flowing through the land tear away 
much soil from the mountain sides and the river banks along 
their way. The rivers carry some of this soil and the min¬ 
erals which it contains into the lakes and oceans. In this 
way the rivers have carried so much salt into the oceans that 
the ocean water has become salty. 

In the United States there is a lake called the Great Salt 
Lake which is even saltier than the ocean. The Great Salt 
Lake is a shut-in lake, and the salt which is brought into 
the lake stays there as it stays in the ocean. 

How Salt Reaches Our Tables 

Our bodies need salt. There is salt in a few of the plants 
and in the meat which we eat, but there is not enough salt in 
these foods for our bodies. So workers have to get salt for 
us directly from the earth or from salt water. 

One way in which salt is made for us is by evaporation. 
Salt water from salt lakes or from the ocean is run into huge 
basins, where it stands until all the water has passed off as 
vapor. This leaves a layer of salt. In many countries salt 





118 


FEEDING THE WORLD 


is obtained in this way from the ocean water. In the United 
States much salt is made by evaporating water from Great 
Salt Lake. 

Salt is also pumped up from salt wells. In places where 
the earth has stored up much salt, men dig wells and pump 
water down into the salt. Then they pump the water up 
again. When the water comes up, it is so salty that a gallon 
of water may hold two pounds of salt. This salty water is 
called hrine. Evaporating the brine leaves the salt. 

A third way of getting salt is by mining. When salt is 
dry, it forms crystals. We see small crystals in the table 
salt we use, but there are mines under the earth where salt 
is found in huge crystals which look like rocks. In a few 
places where men have found large deposits of rock salt 
underground, they have sunk shafts into the earth. In 
a salt mine, miners go down the shaft to chop the salt out in 
chunks. Then they load the rock salt on wagons which run 
along tracks in the mine to the shaft. Up the shaft goes 
the salt. From the mine the salt is taken to a near-by re¬ 
finery, where it is made ready for our tables. The table salt 
which we eat comes from mines of rock salt. 

Things to Do 

1. Fill a shallow dish with water and put it on the window 
sill in your classroom. Watch it from day to day to see what 
happens to it. 

2. Can you tell, from your reading about the water on the 
surface of the ocean, what does happen to water when exposed 
to the air? 




WATER AND SALT 


119 


3. When your doll has a washday, what happens to the 
clothes hanging on the clothesline? 

4. Watch the puddles of water in your yard after a rainy 
day. Report to your class what happens to them. 

5. Keep a record of the time it takes for similar puddles to 
disappear on a cloudy day and on a sunshiny day. 

6. Be sure you know what these words mean and can spell 
them: 

quench reservoir brine 

evaporate artificial • mist 

engineers chunk irrigation 

















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PART IV 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 

CHAPTER 

17. The Clothes We Wear 

18. Clothing from Animals: Furs and Leather 

19. Clothing from Animals: Wool and Silk 

20. Clothing from Plants: Cotton, Linen, Rubber 





Chapter 17 

THE CLOTHES WE WEAR 

Birds have feathers to protect their bodies against heat 
and cold. Fish are covered with scales. Many animals have 
thick hides or they have coats of fur or wool. Man alone of 
all the animals has to make clothes to keep his body from 
becoming either too hot or too cold. 

Warm Clothes for Cold Countries: 

Wool, Leather, Fur 

In the cold Arctic countries people wear furs all the year 
round. In temperate countries like our own where the 
winters are not so cold, people wear wool and leather as well 
as fur. These clothes we all get from animals. 

Long ago hunters learned how to get furs and leather from 
animals; long ago farmers learned how to spin thread and 
weave cloth from the wool which grew on the backs of their 
sheep. 

Cool Clothes for Warm Countries: Cotton and Linen 

In the tropical jungles the weather is so warm that people 
do not need fur or wool. The jungle dwellers have no cold 
winds or snow to chill them, but because the climate is hot, 

they have to be careful that they do not become overheated. 

123 


124 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


They go about almost naked and rub vegetable oils on their 
bodies, so that the heat will not make their skins too dry. 
Such little clothing as they do wear, they make from plants, 
either from cool wild grasses or from leaves. 

India is a warm country. A great part of India is in the 
tropics. Many of the people live in jungles. In India there 
are also farms and cities. Long ago the farmers in India 
learned to make a cool cloth from the fibers of a plant called 
the cotton plant. They drew threads from the cotton fibers 
and wove these threads into cotton cloth. This cotton cloth 
was cool; it was also strong, much stronger than the cloth¬ 
ing which the jungle people made of grasses and leaves. It 
is believed that India was the first country to raise cotton 
for cloth. The cotton plant was brought from India to our 
country more than two hundred years ago. 

Another strong cool cloth which people in warm countries 
learned to make from plants is linen. Even before the people 
of India learned how to weave cotton cloth, the farmers in 
Egypt knew how to make linen cloth from the flax plant. 
They raised flax along the banks of the Nile, and they spun 
linen thread and wove linen cloth from the fibers of the 
plant. The ancient Phoenicians taught the people of Ire¬ 
land how to grow flax and how to weave linen. Today Ire¬ 
land is famous for its fine linen cloth. 

Silk 

Furs, leather, and wool are warm and protect our bodies 
against wintry cold. Cotton and linen are cool and protect 




THE CLOTHES WE WEAR 


125 


our bodies against summer heat. There is another clothing 
material which is both cool in summer and warm in winter. 
This is silk. Silk was discovered by the Chinese more than 
four thousand years ago. 

Silk cloth comes from a little caterpillar called the silk¬ 
worm which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree. You 
may have raised silkworms in your school. How the Chinese 
learned to use these worms for making silk, we shall read 
later. 

Today in our own country we wear furs and leather as did 
the hunters of old. We wear clothes made of wool. We wear 
linen clothes as the Egyptians did. We wear cotton clothes 
as the people of India do. We wear silk clothes as the 
Chinese do. 

Indian Clothes 

But the Indians who lived in this country before the white 
men came did not wear silk or wool or cotton or linen. They 
could not wear wool, because they had no sheep. They could 
not wear cotton or linen, because they did not raise cotton 
or flax plants; nor did they know how to raise silkworms 
and make silk cloth. Being without wool, cotton, linen, or 
silk, the Indians wore furs. They also wore leather clothes 
made from deerskin and buffalo hides. 

When the white people came to this country, they brought 
woolen clothes with them. They learned from the Indians 
to wear deerskin. But they preferred to dress as they had 
dressed in Europe. 








126 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


How Cotton, Linen, Wool, and Silk 
Came to America 

As the newcomers did not want to buy all their clothes 
from the weavers in Europe, they brought over sheep and 
made their own woolen clothes. They brought over flax¬ 
seed, planted flax, and made their own linen. After a time 
some of the farmers in the southern part of this country 
planted cotton, from which cotton clothes could be made. 

Then there came a time when ships built in the United 
States began to go on long voyages to China. When they 
returned, these ships brought back silk cloth to sell in this 
country. Today the United States imports raw silk, and the 
silk cloth is made here. 

Now we know why we can wear wool and cotton and linen 
and silk in this country where the Indians had only animal 
skins for their clothes. This does not mean that the Indians 
did not know how to weave. They practiced weaving with 
different kinds of grasses long before cotton, wool, or silk were 
known in this country. Indian tribes living in those states 
which are now called Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, south¬ 
ern Colorado, Utah, and western Texas made excellent coiled 
basketry, woven sandals, and bags made of woven twine 
hundreds of years before Columbus discovered America. 

Things to Do 

1. Make a collection of cotton, wool, linen, and silk ma¬ 
terials used for clothing. 

2. Plant some cotton seeds in your window box or flower pot. 




THE CLOTHES WE WEAR 


127 


3. Study the map of the world; locate the places mentioned 
in this chapter where linen clothing was first worn; where silk 
clothing was first worn; where furs were worn. 

4. Print on an outline map of the world with a colored pencil 
the names of these places. 

5. Ask your teacher to help you raise some silkworms in 
your classroom. If you feed them and watch them grow, you 
will see some very interesting things happen. 

6. Make a collection of pictures showing the raw materials 
from which we get all the kinds of clothing mentioned in this 
chapter. 

7. You have read in this chapter about people clothed differ¬ 
ently from us; collect pictures of these people in their native 
dress. 

8. Ask your teacher if she will help you weave a mat of 
raffia, which is a kind of grass used by American Indians for 
weaving mats and baskets. Perhaps you could weave a simple 
basket. 




Chapter 18 

CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS: FURS 
AND LEATHER 

Long ago cave-dwelling hunters hunted in the wild forests 
for furs. Today, far away in the cold north countries, 
hunters still spend their lives hunting for the furs which 
men and women wear. 

The animals which yield the best furs live where the 
winters are long and severe. The Arctic seal and the bear 
are fur-bearing animals. In Canada and in other lands, not 
quite so far north as the Arctic coimtries, live the otter, the 
beaver, the marten, the mink, and the fox. Their furs are 
thickest and best during the cold winter months. 

Years ago there w^ere many fur-bearing animals in our 
countr}% and men hunted and set fur traps in the forests 
which covered a great part of our land. Now^ that a great 
part of our forests are gone, we have to get most of our furs 
from Russia, from the Pribilof Islands, off the coast of 
Alaska, and from Canada. 

The Life of the Fur-Trapper 

The life of the Canadian fur-trapper is a lonely one. 
Bearing his traps on his back, he sets out each day from his 
little log cabin in the snow-covered forest. His broad snow- 

shoes keep him from sinking too deeply into the snow. In ' 

128 ^ 


CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


129 


each tree that he passes, he chops out a mark with his ax. 
Whenever he sees the tracks of a beaver, a mink, an otter, 
or a fox, in the snow% he stops to set one of his metal traps. 
Before dark, he returns; the ax marks in the trees guide him 
back to his cabin. 

The next day he gathers the animals which his traps have 
caught for him. He resets the traps and, with pack loaded, 
returns to his cabin. 

Here, stripping the furs from the animals, he stretches 
them on w^ooden frames. 

So the trapper hves for months, far from the comforts of 
farm and to\^Ti. His food is wild meat and canned goods. 
His companions are the birds and the trees. His music is the 
music of the forest \sdnds blowing through the tall trees. 
As he looks out from his cabin door, he sees frozen streams 
in the valleys below and mountains raising their ice-covered 
summits to the chill blue sky above. 

When spring com^ and the rivers thaw, he loads his 
dried furs in his canoe and paddles to the nearest trading 
post some hundreds of miles away. At the trading post the 
trapper sells his furs. After a time he paddles his canoe back 
to his cabin, to mend his traps for the following winter. 

The trader who has bought the furs sends them to the 
countries where they \\t 11 be worn. Many of the Canadian 
furs are sold to the United States. In a few large cities in 
our coimtry skillful furriers carefully clean the furs, dye 
them, and make them up into scarfs, muffs, coats, and trim¬ 
mings for suits and dresses. 





130 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


How many people who wear furs ever think of the lonely 
trapper in his little log cabin in Canada, of the men who 
hunt seals on the icy Pribilof Islands, of the men who set 
their traps in the forests of Russia? 

Within the last few years men have found it possible to 
raise some animals for their furs instead of hunting or trap¬ 
ping the animals in the forests and streams. Foxes and 
muskrats are raised in this way, and the places where they 
are raised are spoken of as fur farms, just as the places 
where cows are raised for their milk are called milk farms, 
or dairy farms. 

How We Get Leather: Tanning Hides and Skins 

As a matter of fact, the cow, like the goat and the sheep, 
also helps to clothe us by furnishing us with leather. Our 
leather shoes, our leather gloves, our leather belts, come from 
the skins or hides of cows, sheep, and goats. The skins and 
hides of other animals are also used in making leather. 

For thousands of years men knew how to make leather. 
First they scraped the flesh and hair from the hides. Then 
they laid the hides in vats filled with shavings of oak bark. 
They poured water over hides and bark. For six months the 
tannic acid in the oak bark soaked through the pores of the 
hides, toughening the animal skins so that they would wear 
well. This long soaking is called tanning. A tanned hide is 
called leather. 

Today leather is still made in very much the same way, 
except that the tanners now use many machines in place of 




CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


131 


hand tools and get tannic acid from other plants besides the 
oak tree. 

Each year the American tanners buy millions of skins and 
hides from the meat packers in our country. They buy skins 
and hides from the sheep and cattle ranchers in Argentina. 
They also buy skins and hides from countries in South 
America, from South Africa, from China, and from Europe. 

The leather of cows, horses, oxen, buffaloes, and bulls is 
called hides; that of smaller animals — calves, sheep, goats, 
and pigs — is called skins. 

In the tanneries of today millions of hides are made into 
leather each year. Soaking the hides in a lime bath for days 
loosens the outside hair. A hand scraper removes the flesh 
from the inside of the hides. Because oak is now scarce, 
tanners use the bark of the hemlock and chestnut tree. The 
bark of these trees contains tannic acid. The tanners also 
import tannic acids which are obtained from plants growing 
in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. These acids 
are boiled out of the plants in the countries where the plants 
grow and are then shipped to our tanners in liquid form. 

The tanners soak the hides in the tanning acids for at 
least three months. Sometimes the hides must be soaked 
for nine months before the leather is ready to be made into 
the many articles we use. 

Many Uses of Leather 

When the leather is finished, it is used for many purposes. 
It may be made into gloves, valises, suitcases, straps, or 



132 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


harnesses. It may be used as upholstery, either for auto¬ 
mobiles or for furniture. Much leather is used for machine 
belts which help to drive the wheels of factory engines. But 
the greater part of the leather from the tanneries goes into 
the making of shoes. 

Leather: the Chief Shoe Material 
In many foreign countries people used to wear shoes quite 
different from those worn in America. In Holland wooden 
shoes were worn. In China and Japan people wore straw 
sandals, and in fact many still do. But there is so much 
traveling in these days and so much mingling together of 
all peoples of the world that customs in dress are rapidly 
changing, and people the world over are beginning to dress 
more or less alike. 

In these days leather shoes are worn the world over, ex¬ 
cept as fashions in shoes change to some other material. 
Shoes made of fabrics, such as satin, fancy silk, and velvet, 
are sometimes worn by women for dressy wear. 

Canvas and rubber shoes are worn by people who play 
tennis, or other light outdoor games. But for everyday 
wear, leather shoes are the most serviceable, and that is 
why leather is one of the important materials in the making 
of our clothes. 

Making Shoes: the Old Way and the New 
In the days of our grandparents, the man who mended 
shoes made shoes as well. He made shoes by hand with the 





CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


133 


aid of a few hand tools. But today shoes are made in cities 
where there are large shoe factories run by machines. Many 
of these factories are found in the cities of New England. 
There are very large shoe factories in other parts of our 
country. 

In these shoe factories the work is divided. One machine 
cuts the leather for the upper part of the shoe, another 
punches the buttonholes, another shapes the soles and sews 
the upper parts to the soles. Each machine does some one 
part of the work. The man who tends the machine has 
only to guide it at its special task. Finally all the parts are 
put together, and the shoes are finished. 

The Travels of a Pair of Shoes 

Our shoes can carry us many a mile. But what long 
journeys had to be made before we could have our shoes! 
The herds which furnished the leather in your pair of shoes 
may have grazed either on the southwestern plains or in the 
corn belt of our own country; they may have spent their 
lives on the plains of Argentina. Boats or trains had to 
carry the animals to meat-packing cities, and the hides to 
tanneries. Carloads and shiploads of oak, hemlock, and 
chestnut had to be sent to the tanneries. Ocean ships had 
to bring tannic acid from all corners of the earth. After the 
leather was tanned, it had to be sent to the shoe factories. 

Yet the travels of your pair of shoes were not over. There 
was still the journey by railroad, steamship, or automobile 
truck to the stores from which you bought them. 







134 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


Now that you have them on your feet, you will walk many 
miles in your home, along country roads or city streets. 

Looking down at your shoes, you will remember the 
traveling they did before they reached you. They will re- 



The Travels of a Pair of Shoes 


mind you how the whole world must work together to pro¬ 
vide the things we need. 

Questions to Answer 

1. Name the most important fur-bearing animals. 

2. How are the different kinds of fur-bearing animals caught? 

3. Where do we get our leather clothing? Can you name 
articles of clothing made of leather? 

4. How has the making of shoes changed since our great¬ 
grandfather’s day? 

5. Although this chapter doesn’t tell you, can you find out 
where your own shoes were made? 

6. Why do the children in some places wear wooden shoes 
instead of leather ones? 































CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


135 


Things to Do 

1. Locate on your outline map the places all over the world 
where fur-bearing animals live. 

2. Locate on the same map the countries from which we buy 
leather. 

3. Locate the countries where cotton is grown; where silk¬ 
worms are cultivated; where sheep are raised; and where flax 
is grown. 

4. Make a list of the kinds of clothing made of leather, of 
silk, of cotton, of wool, and of linen. 

5. If you live near a shoe factory, plan a visit to see how 
shoes are made. 

6. Write the story of your visit in your notebooks. 

7. Study the words in the list below. If you are not sure of 
the meaning of each word, read the paragraph in which you 
found it; then see if you cannot decide what it means. 


trapper 

companion 

scraper 

factory 

vat 


upholstery 
tannic acid 
tanneries 
fabric 
muskrat 


picturesque 

fashionable 

serviceable 

stripping 

furrier 




Chapter 19 

CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS: WOOL 
AND SILK 


All of us who live where the winters are cold wear woolen 
clothing. Our sweaters are made of wool; we have woolen 
suits and woolen overcoats, woolen stockings, woolen under¬ 
clothes. 


Some of our wool comes from sheep raised on small farms 
in the eastern and middle states of our country. Some wool 



Growing Coats of Wool 


comes from the sheep ranches in the southwest. We get 
great quantities of wool from sheep raised in the mountain¬ 
ous states on the Pacific coast. We even import wool from 
Australia, Argentina, and other countries. 

136 







CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


137 


Grazing Sheep Grow Coats of Wool 

In the western states of our country, all through the winter 
millions of sheep graze in the valleys. When summer comes, 
the sheep herders lead their sheep up into the mountains. 

The office of the sheep herder is a little wagon on wheels. 
Here he keeps his tools, his food supplies, and his extra 
clothing. Here, when it rains, he and his shepherd dogs find 
shelter. At other times the herder sleeps under the open 
sky, rolled up in his blanket. 

His dogs help the herder round up the sheep, but try as 
they will to keep the sheep together, some wander off and 
get lost. When the bleating of lost sheep reaches them, 
the herder and his dogs go out to bring them in. 

Each day the herder leads his sheep higher and higher, up 
toward the timber line, beyond which it is too cold for trees 
to grow. In the summer wild grass does grow in these high 
places, on mountain plains which are called plateaus. Day 
by day the sheep graze here; and as they graze, they grow 
their woolen coats to protect them against the coming winter. 

When autumn comes and the mountain grass is gone, the 
herder leads his sheep down into the valleys. In the spring 
the shearers clip off the sheep’s wool. 

So men have been shearing sheep ever since the farmers of 
long ago first learned to make thread and woolen cloth from 
wool. 




138 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


How Woolen Cloth Is Made 

Just how men learned the art of weaving, we do not know; 
but they did learn that the wool from their sheep could be 
spun into long threads and that these threads could then be 
woven into cloth. Many believe that women were the first 
spinners and weavers. 

The weaving of cloth was done on a hand loom, a wooden 
frame in which many threads were arranged in parallel lines 
lengthwise. Then other threads were drawn sidewise over 
and under the lengthwise threads. The sidewise threads 
were drawn through the other threads by a long stick called 
a shuttle. 

Whether wool was first woven by the Egyptians or the 
Greeks is uncertain, but it is known that the sheep has been 
a domestic animal from prehistoric times, for its bones have 
been found with those of human beings in ancient tombs. 

There are some parts of the world where people still spin 
woolen thread or yarn by hand or on small spinning wheels 
which draw out one thread at a time. They still weave 
woolen cloth on hand looms. 

In our country the wool from the sheep ranches is sent in 
bags to woolen mills, where great machines made of iron 
and steel spin the yarn and weave the cloth. 

In the woolen mills, machines first scour the wool. Often, 
after the scouring the wool is dipped into vats of dye to give 
it whatever color is desired. Then the wool passes through 
carding machines. These machines have rollers armed with 






CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


139 


teeth which pull at the fibers in the wool to separate them. 
The carded wool is combed by combing machines, which 
remove the shorter fibers. 

Now the wool is ready for the spinning machine. The 
spinning machine has two hundred spindles on a single iron 
frame. These spindles draw out the thread or yarn which 
is wound up on spools. 

Then comes the weaving of the cloth. After the length¬ 
wise threads have been arranged, the power loom weaves the 



A Factory Built near Water Power 

wool almost without the touch of human hand. As the 
shuttle flies back and forth, the lengthwise threads are raised 
and lowered, to make plaids, stripes, or herringbone. 

You would need to visit a woolen mill, probably, to under¬ 
stand clearly just how scouring, dyeing, carding, combing, 
spinning, and weaving are done, but you can at least under¬ 
stand now that to make woolen cloth, men have to know 
how to make and to run many different machines. 

In this country, there are many woolen mills in New Eng¬ 
land, where rivers help furnish power for all this machinery. 
















140 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


There are also woolen mills on the Pacific coast and in the 
southern states, close to the herds of sheep which graze on 
the mountain plains. England, too, has many woolen mills. 

Almost all of us wear clothing made of wool. As our 
country does not produce enough wool for our clothes, we 
import wool from other sheep-raising lands such as Australia, 
and Argentina in South America. 

Ready-Made Clothes 

Most of our woolen clothing is made in clothing factories 
in New York, Rochester, Chicago, and a few other large 
cities. In these clothing factories there are, again, many 
machines. Machines cut the woolen cloth; machines sew 
the goods; and machines press the goods. 

The most useful of these machines in the clothing factory 
is the sewing machine. Until this machine was invented, 
people all over the world sewed clothes by hand. Stitch, 
stitch, stitch, tailors and dressmakers sewed for hours each 
day, and the dresses and suits which people wore were all 
handmade. Most often they were made to order for the 
man or woman, boy or girl, who had to wear them. 

Your great-grandmother probably made all the clothes 
for her children by hand, for she could not go to the store 
and buy them ready-made as your mother can. Then, 
about the year 1846, Elias Howe, an American, invented a 
sewing machine which used foot power to work a needle 
much faster than fingers could stitch. This was a great 
help to tailors and dressmakers. 





CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


141 


Today in the clothing factories sewing machines using 
steam or electric power can make hundreds of stitches each 
minute and turn out more garments in a day than the hand 
sewers could turn out in a month. For this reason most 
people today wear ‘ready-made’ clothes, or, in other words, 
clothing made in factories. These ready-made clothes come 
in many different sizes to fit people who are either short or 
tall, slim or stout. 

Now that we have seen how woolen cloth is made, we shall 
find it easy to understand the making of silk cloth. 

We have seen how the sheep, eating grass, turns part of its 
food into a woolen overcoat. In much the same way a little 
worm called the silkworm, eating mulberry leaves, turns 
part of its food into a fine sticky substance which it stores up 
in two sacs, one on each side of its head. 

When the silkworm is one month old, it draws this sub¬ 
stance out of its head in two fine threads and winds these 
threads around its body. 

The Worm Which Helps to Clothe Us 

When the body of the silkworm is covered with the threads, 
we call it a cocoon. If the cocoon is left to itself, the silkworm 
inside gradually changes, until after a time it breaks open 
the cocoon and comes out as a moth. But long ago the 
Chinese decided not to let all the cocoons change to moths. 
They learned that if they soaked a cocoon in hot water, 
they could uncoil the fine threads which the silkworm had 
spun around itself. This thread is called raw silk. By 



142 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


twisting the threads of several cocoons together as they 
uncoiled them, the Chinese obtained a thread strong enough 
to weave into a cloth on their hand looms. 


How the Chinese learned to use these worms for making 
silk is an interesting story, though no one knows how true it 
is. A Chinese princess with the lovely name of Lady of 



Li Ling encouraged the people of China to grow the mulberry 
tree. She took care of silkworms herself. She invented the 
loom for weaving silk into cloth. The people of China were 
so proud of her that they made her a goddess. They still 
worship her as the Goddess of Silkworms. Every year the 
Chinese people have a festival in her honor. One of the 
ceremonies of this festival is the feeding of silkworms. 

A curious story is also told about how India learned to 
make silk. Another Chinese princess is believed to have car- 














CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


143 



Gathering Mulberry Leaves to Feed the Silkworms 






















144 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


ried into India the eggs of the insect, or moth, and the seed 
of the mulberry tree, hidden in the lining of her headdress. 

Today silkworms are raised in Japan, China, France, 
Spain, and Italy. In all these lands, mulberry trees are 
raised. People feed leaves to the worms and care for them 
until the cocoons are ready. Some of the silk spun from the 
cocoons is woven into cloth in these same lands; the re¬ 
mainder is shipped to other countries as raw silk. Within 
the last hundred years, ways have been found to spin and 
weave silk by machinery. 

The United States imports silk cloth from China and 
Japan. It also imports raw silk, which is woven into cloth in 
factories in this country. 

Rayon: Man-Made Silk 

There is another kind of silk called artificial silk, or fiber 
silk. This silk is made from wood pulp and the fibers of 
certain plants. About a century ago, a Frenchman dis¬ 
covered how to make an artificial silk which is now commonly 
called rayon. Rayon is now made in the United States as 
well as in other countries. The rayon thread can be woven 
by itself into the cloth called rayon, or it can be mixed with 
wool, cotton, or pure silk. Rayon is less costly than pure 
silk and for this reason large quantities of it are used today 
in the making of clothing. 




CLOTHING FROM ANIMALS 


145 


A Test to Try 

Can you write in each blank the missing word or words 
which make the statement correct? 

1. Sheep raising is carried on in the _ part of our 

country. 

2. _were the first spinners and weavers. 

3. Woolen cloth is no longer woven by_. 

4. There are many woolen mills in the_section of the 

United States. This section is called_. 

5. The United States imports wool from_and_. 

6. The first sewing machine was invented by_ 

in the year_. 

7. The_were the first people to learn the art of silk 

weaving. 

8. The United States imports silk from_and_. 

9. A_discovered how to make artificial silk. 


Things to Do 

1. Make a chart showing all the different kinds of wool and 
silk which you read about in this chapter. 

2. Locate on your outline map of the world all the places 
mentioned in this chapter. 

3. Write the name of the product for which each place is 
noted: 

4. Draw on this map a dotted line with your blue pencil 
showing the trade routes over which these goods are shipped. 

5. Be very sure you know the meanings of the following 
words and phrases: 


artificial silk loom prehistoric times 

plateaus shuttle domestic animals 

spinning scour ancient tombs 

weaving carding Lady of Li Ling 


festival 
cocoon 
mulberry 
carding machine 
















146 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


6. In the first column below you will find a word that is 
connected in meaning with some word in the second column. 
Put the same number in front of the connected word. 


1. artificial silk 

sheep 

2. silkworm 

Elias Howe 

3. shearing 

Chinese princess 

4. sewing machine 

China 

5. silk weaving 

Australia 

6. wool 

rayon 














Chapter 20 


CLOTHING FROM PLANTS: COTTON, 
LINEN, RUBBER 

A girl is getting ready to go to school on a warm, rainy 
morning. She is wearing a cotton dress, with linen cuffs, 
and a linen collar. She is putting on her rubber overshoes. 
Before leaving home, she will put on her rubber raincoat. 

To provide the girl with her dress, her overshoes, and rain¬ 
coat, the cotton plant, the flax plant, and the rubber tree 
had to take root in the earth. 

Cotton: the Cloth Made from a Fluffy Seed Pod 

The plant on which cotton grows needs a warm climate 
and well-watered soil. In our country there are cotton plan¬ 
tations in almost all the southern states from the Atlantic 
coast to Texas. This region is called the Cotton Belt. 

In the spring the cotton seed is planted. By summer the 
cotton bushes blossom. As the bright blossoms fall, small 
seed pods appear in their places. All through the summer 
the seed pods grow until they become large holts, as they are 
called. When these bolls burst open, we can see that each 
one is filled with a fluffy mass of hairlike fibers wrapped 
around the small seeds as if to keep them warm. These 

white balls of fiber are cotton. 

147 


148 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


In harvest time field workers pick the cotton from the 
bolls. These cotton pickers must be careful not to get 
either leaves or boll shells into their picking. 

Wagons carry the picked cotton from the fields to the 
gins where the seeds are removed. In the cotton gins, re¬ 
volving metal combs remove the seeds. The cotton gin was 
invented in 1793 by an American named Eli Whitney. 
Before the cotton gin was invented, men used to remove the 
seed by hand, and they could clean about one pound of 
cotton in an hour. The cotton gins of today can clean one 
hundred pounds in an hour. 

After the seed has been removed, great machines press 
the cotton into five-hundred-pound bales. Wagons haul the 
bales to railway stations or to river docks. Ships and trains 
then carry the bales on their way to the cotton mills where 
cotton cloth is made. Much of the cotton is shipped to mills 
in New England where waterfalls furnish power for the 
spinning and weaving machines. New England was once 
the center of cotton weaving, but during the past fifteen 
years men have built many cotton mills near waterfalls in 
the states which lie in the cotton belt. The cotton planters 
send much of their cotton to these mills, which are nearer to 
them than the mills in New England. 

Making Cotton Cloth 

In the mills the great bales of cotton are first put into 
machines which pull the closely packed cotton apart and 
deliver it in small tufts to a moving belt. This belt carries 




CLOTHING FROM PLANTS _ m 

the cotton to other machines which clean the fibers and pre¬ 
pare them for the spinning machines. 

The spinning machines draw out the fibers and twist them 
into long threads. It is this-twisted thread which we buy 
when we buy a spool of cotton and which is also used in 
weaving cloth. If we untwist the thread on a spool of cotton 
we can easily see the fibers of which it was made. 

The power looms which weave the threads into cotton 
cloth are much like the looms which weave woolen cloth. 
The machines work as if by magic. The shuttles carry the 
sidewise threads over and under the lengthwise threads in 
any order which the clothmaker desires, to weave cloth of 
different patterns. 

The cotton cloth is then bleached until it is pure white. 
If colored cloth is wanted, the cloth is dyed in vats. If 
colored patterns are desired, they can be either printed on 
the cloth by printing presses, or woven into the cloth from 
dyed thread. 

Long ago the Chinese learned how to print patterns from 
carved wooden blocks filled in with colors. Today the pat¬ 
terns are put on copper rollers. As the printing presses run, 
the rollers dip into a well of color. A knife scrapes the color 
off the raised flat part of the copper. The roller presses down 
on the cloth and prints the pattern on it. 

The cotton dress which the girl is wearing may have been 
made for her by her mother, but most of the cotton dresses 
and other cotton clothing which people wear today are made 
in clothing factories. 






150 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


Linen: the Cloth Made from Plant Stalks 

The story of linen is much like the story of cotton, except 
that linen thread is made from fibers in the stalks of the 
flax plant. 

The flax plant needs a cooler climate than the cotton plant. 
It needs plenty of rain. Good flax is raised in Belgium, 
Holland, and Ireland. Russia has great flax fields. The 
United States raises flax, too, but our flax is raised for the 
seed. Flaxseed is used in making linseed oil for mixing 
paints. 

Flaxseed is planted in the spring. By June the fields of 
flax are covered with sky-blue flowers. In the early autumn, 
when the plants have borne seed for next year’s crop, men 
pull up the flax stalks, which are about three feet high, and 
tie them in bundles. 

If we examine the stems of almost any flowers, we can see 
fine fibers running through them. We notice that the outer 
fibers are coarse and woody. 

The stalks of the flax also have fine and coarse fibers mixed. 
Linen is made from the fine fibers in the flax stalks. 

To remove the fine fibers, the bundles of stalks are lowered 
into streams and kept in water until they begin to rot. 
After the stalks have rotted, the bundles are taken from the 
streams and laid out to dry. Then machinery breaks up the 
stalks and removes the heavy wooden fibers. 

The fine fibers are now prepared so that spinners can draw 
threads from them for weaving linen. 





CLOTHING FROM PLANTS 


151 


Until about one hundred years ago, most linen was spun 
and woven by hand in the homes of spinners and weavers. 
Today most of the spinning of linen thread and the weaving 
of linen cloth is done in factories by machines; linen clothes 
are also made by machines in factories. 

Now we see how the girl mentioned earlier in this chapter 
got her linen cuffs and her linen collar. 

Rubber: the Sap of a Tree That Helps to 
Clothe Us 

The rubber overshoes and the rubber raincoat which she 
is wearing is made from a liquid which oozes out of the bark 
of certain trees. The rubber tree grows best in tropical 
countries or in countries which are nearly as warm as the 
tropics. We import all our rubber. 

For a long time almost all the rubber which people used 
was obtained from jungles along the Amazon River in Brazil. 
Lately, rubber companies have been clearing jungles in the 
islands near India. Here they planted many square miles 
of rubber trees, and today these plantations supply a large 
portion of the world's rubber. 

To obtain rubber from the rubber tree, men cut slits into 
the bark and they place cups to catch the sticky, white juice 
which flows from the wounds. This is called tapping the 
trees and is very much like tapping trees for maple syrup. 
In the Amazon jungles the Indians of South America do this 
work. The men tap many trees each morning. Then they 
go over their ground to gather the cups. The jungle rubber 



152 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


is smoked and hardened over fires, so that it can be shipped 
in lumps. 

Some of the plantation rubber is shipped in liquid form. 
Boats bring great cargoes of rubber to the factories in our 
country. 

In the Amazon jungles the season for gathering rubber 
begins as soon as the floods of the Amazon River are over. 
This is usually about the first of August. The natives leave 
their primitive homes, often traveling hundreds of miles 



The Jungle Rubber Is Smoked and Hardened over Fires. 


into the forest lowlands. There, within easy reach of the 
rubber trees, they set up their camps. They build huts out 
of poles covered with palm thatch, and here they live in little 
colonies while the rubber harvest is going on. It takes about 
six months (from August to January or February) to harvest 
the rubber crop. 

People did not always know how to use rubber for clothes. 
When white people first came to Central America and South 
America, they saw the Indians playing with balls made of 
rubber. After a time some men noticed that this material 
sheds water. But for a long time rubber was used for little 











CLOTHING FROM PLANTS 


153 



Tapping Trees on a Rubber Plantation 





































154 


CLOTHING THE WORLD 


more than erasers. This continued to be true until Charles 
Goodyear, an American inventor, who had been experi¬ 
menting with rubber, made an important discovery. He 
learned by accident that rubber and sulphur, heated together, 
would stay soft in cold water and would not become soft 
and sticky in warm weather. Many uses were soon found 
for this prepared mixture of rubber and sulphur, which is 
called vulcanized rubber. 

Today rubber is used in making automobile tires, machine 
belting, garden hose, and the hose with which firemen fight 
fires. Rubber parts are used in .many tools and engines. 
Because rubber sheds rain, rubber is used to make shoes and 
coats to be worn on rainy days. Rubber shoes and coats 
are made in factories by machinery. 

Now we know how the girl we described at the beginning 
of the chapter got her overshoes and her raincoat. 

Things to Do 

1. Locate on your outline map of the world, the countries 
in which flax is raised. Write the word flax near the name of 
the country. 

2. Do the same thing with cotton; with rubber. 

3. Make a list of all the things you can think of made of 
rubber; see how many of them you can get together for a 
collection. 

4. Make a collection of different kinds of linen and cotton 
goods. 

5. If you arrange all the samples of materials which you 
bring to class on charts, you will have a very interesting exhibit. 

6. Your exhibit will be even more interesting if you write 





CLOTHING FROM PLANTS 


155 


short compositions telling what you know about these samples. 
Some of the important facts you might write about are: the 
raw materials from which they are made; where they are found; 
what kinds of useful articles they are made into. 

7. You might collect pictures of the different peoples of the 
world who are engaged in cultivating cotton, flax, and rubber. 

8. Find out what linseed oil looks like; what it is used for; 
how much it costs. 

9. Check up to be sure that you know the meaning of these 
words: importy ooze, primitive, thatch; also that you know the 
difference between ball, boll, and bale. 






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PART V 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 

CHAPTER 

21. The Story of the House 

22. Materials for Building the House 

23. Furnishing the Home 


i 

> 

i 



Chapter 21 

THE STORY OF THE HOUSE 

Whatever language people may speak, one of the words 
which is dearest to them is the word which means home. 

The birds in the air build nests. The fox digs himself a 
burrow in the ground. The beaver builds his home in a 
lodge in the middle of a stream. So, too, from the beginning 
man has had to make a home to shelter him. 

Houses of Long Ago 

The hunters of long ago found shelter from bad weather 
and protection from wild animals in their caves. The 
nomad herders lived in skin tents which they could carry 
with them from place to place. When men became farmers, 
they built houses near their fields. 

In Egypt farmers learned to make bricks from clay, and 

they used these bricks to build their houses. 

159 














160 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


When the Egyptians learned to make metal hammers and 
chisels, Egyptian builders used these tools to cut stone into 
huge building blocks. With these huge cut stones they 
built the pyramids. Later the people in Europe used marble, 
granite, or other hard stones to build temples, cathedrals, 
and other large buildings. 

But the people on the farms and in the towns of Europe 
continued to live in simple houses which took less time to 
build. Many people lived in houses built of stones which 
they picked up from their fields. They roofed these houses 
with thatch, which is usually a mixture of mud and. straw. 
Such houses can still be found in European villages. 

In some lands where stone was scarce, people built their 
houses of adobe, ^ which is a sort of sun-dried mud brick, laid 
up to make a wall and often then covered with white plaster. 
Such houses can still be seen in southern France and in 
Spain. 

In countries where wood was plentiful and cheap, many 
people built themselves wooden houses, first sawing the 
trees into boards. In Switzerland, which lies east of France, 
we could see many picturesque wooden houses, called chalets, 
in which the Swiss farmers live. The wood for these houses 
is cut from the forests which grow on the slopes of the Alps 
Mountains. 

^ A Spanish word, pronounced ah-dough'beh. 

2 A French word, pronounced shah-lay'. 






THE STORY OF THE HOUSE 


161 



In the Few Warm Months Eskimos Live in Tents 
Covered with Animal Skins. 


How Builders in Each Land Use Materials at Hand 


In Iceland and in Greenland, the Eskimos often build 
themselves wooden houses from driftwood brought in by 
the ocean. In the few warm months which they have, other 



A Grass House in the Tropics 


Eskimos live in tents covered with animal skins, but in the 
long cold winters most of them live in snow houses built 
from cakes of snow. 

In some tropical countries men build their homes of reeds 
and grasses. 




































162 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


When the white people came from Europe to America, 
they found the Indians living in different kinds of houses. 
The Indians in the tropical parts of America lived in grass 
houses. In some warm parts of our country, the Indians 
lived in adobe houses. The Indians who hunted buffalo on 



In the Southwestern Part of the United States Some Indians 
Lived in Adobe Houses. 

the grassy plains or prairies in the West lived in tents. The 
Indians along the Atlantic coast lived in houses made of 
rough logs. 

The white men who settled in the part of America which 
is now the United States built their first homes of logs, as 
the neighboring Indians did. Later they began to build 
frame houses of boards. At first they cut these boards out 
of logs with handsaws. Then they built lumber mills on the 
banks of rivers, and used water power to work their saws. 

After a time, when many of the white people lived in 
towns, a few men built themselves brick houses. The bricks 










THE STORY OF THE HOUSE 


163 



The Prairie Indians Lived in Tents. 


were either made here or imported from Kurope. In some 
places people used field stone to build churches, forts, and 
even homes. 

As the white men went westward across America, their 
first shelters were rough log cabins. Then came wooden 
frame houses and brick houses. 




















164 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


Why There Are Apartment Houses 

Until about fifty years ago many of the people in this 
country lived on farms, and each farmer lived in a separate 
house of wood or brick or field stone. In these houses people 
were still doing much work by hand which was soon to be 
done in the city factories by machinery. As the factories 
took over more and more of the work which used to be done 
in the home, the cities grew more crowded. People who 
worked in the cities and who wanted to live as near to their 
work as possible had to live in houses which would hold three 
or four families. 

Then as the cities grew still more crowded, houses were 
built to hold twenty or thirty families. Today in some cities 
there are houses which will hold hundreds of families. These 
houses are called apartment houses. 

Apartment houses are built of brick and steel. City fac¬ 
tories are also built of brick and steel. 

In a few cities many men work each day in office buildings 
which are twenty, thirty, or even forty stories high. These 
skyscrapers are built of steel. In the next chapter you will 
learn how these high buildings are constructed. 

A Test to Try 

Can you write in the blank spaces in the sentences below 
the word or words which make these statements correct? 

1. The Egyptians built the_of_. 

2. The Indians in the hot parts of America lived in_ 

houses. 







THE STORY OF THE HOUSE 


165 


3. The earliest American homes were built of_. 

4. Many houses today are built of_or_. 

5. Apartment houses are built of_,_, or_. 

6. Very high buildings, having many stories, are called 

7. Many early Indians of the_part of our country 

lived in homes called_.. 

8. Hunters of prehistoric times lived in_. 

9. Herders of prehistoric times were_. They lived in 


Something to Do 

1. See whether you can find pictures or make drawings of 
these kinds of houses: 

a skin tent a Swiss chalet a log cabin 

a thatched roof an Indian tepee an apartment house 

an adobe an Eskimo igloo a skyscraper 















Chapter 22 

MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 


Looking about us in our homes, we see that the doors, the 
window sashes, the floors, are made of wood. All through our 
country, in twenty million homes and more, builders have 
used wood. 

How Wood Is Obtained for House Building 
Forests, supplying wood to builders, once grew thickly 
over the greater part of our land. Today a large portion of 
our woodland is gone. The trees have long since been cut 
down to make room for fields and towns and cities. Where, 
then, do the builders of today get wood for our houses? 

Much wood comes from forests in the western part of the 
United States. Here, on the sides of mountains and on the 
wooded plains, trees grow thick and tall. Much wood comes 
from forests in the southern states, from the Atlantic coast 
to the Gulf of Mexico. There are forests in the northern 
part of New England and near the Great Lakes. A good 
deal of our wood is imported from the forests of Canada. 

Let us picture a winter in a lumber camp in Canada. 
Snow is on the ground. But the spruce, the hemlock, the 
fir, and the pine which grow in the forest are green. They 
belong to the family of evergreen trees, which are green all 
the year round. 


166 


MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 167 


The lumberjacks who work at logging live in small cabins. 
One man cooks for all the men. Each day the forest resounds 
with the clang of their axes or the buzz of their saws. An 
ax hews out a notch in a tree. The cross saw, worked by 
two men, cuts its way through the heavy trunk; and the 
tree comes crashing to the earth. In a few months this part 



The Logs Are Floated Downstream to the Lumber Mills. 


of the once green and beautiful forest will be no more. The 
lumberjacks will move on to build a new camp some miles 
away. 

But chopping down a forest in Canada does not bring the 
wood to our homes. What happens next? 

The trees are stripped of their branches. They are sawed 
into logs. The logs are drawn to the edge of the nearest 
river. Here they are arranged in piles. 

Then, when spring comes and the ice thaws, the logs, tens 
and tens of thousands at a time, are floated downstream to 







168 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


the lumber mills. The men who guide the logs on their 
journey are called log drivers. See them out on the river, 
jumping from log to log. Spiked shoes keep the log drivers 
from slipping. They use long poles tipped with iron hooks 
to help drive the logs before them. 

At one point near a bend in the river, the logs get caught 
and begin to jam. Before the log drivers can reach the spot, 
the jam is too large for them to pry the logs apart with 
their poles. The foreman gives the order to use dynamite. 
When the dynamite explodes, the jam breaks and the float¬ 
ing forest continues downstream on its journey to the mill. 

The work of logging is not the same in all forests. . 

In the snow-covered New England forests, the same 
methods are used as in Canada. But in the warm southern 
states, where the yellow pine grows, the men cut the trees 
all the year round and the logs are hauled to the railroad on 
cars drawn by oxen or tractors. Sometimes the logs are 
sawed into boards by portable mills which are set up near 
the standing forests. 

In California, where the giant redwood trees grow, it takes 
a long train of cars to remove a single tree. Each car carries 
one of the heavy logs. 

In the mountain lumber camps of the West, the logs are 
cut into boards and the boards are put on flumes, which are 
wooden slides miles long. Water flowing down the flumes 
carries the boards to the valleys below. 

Sometimes loggers working near broad rivers make a raft 
of the logs by fastening great numbers of them together with 






MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 169 


iron chains. Then, living aboard the raft, the men help 
float it to the towns where the lumber mills are. 

In the lumber towns, machines carry the logs into the 
mills. Inside a sawmill, machines carry each log forward 
against a machine saw. With an almost deafening noise, 
the saw cuts its way through the log from end to end. Next, 
the log is pulled back and turned on to its flattened side. 
Again it is pushed toward the saw. Again the saw does its 



A Flume Carrying Lumber 


work. Then a third time and a fourth, the saw cuts through 
the log, making it a square post or beam. Some of the beams 
are cut into boards. The small strips which have been sawed 
from the log are used for making thinner strips of building 
wood called lath. 

In planing mills, machine planes give the boards a smooth 
finish. 

From the sawmills the wood is now carried by boat or 
train to the lumber yards nearest our homes. Some of the 
lumber is used in the factories where men make furniture. 
Some of it is bought by the men who build our homes. 














170 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


Brick Is a Good Building Material 

Although we all have wood in our homes, many of us live 
in houses which have walls made of brick. Brick is a good 
building material. Brick is fireproof and is therefore safer 
than wood for large city buildings. Apartment houses, 
where many families live, must be made as nearly fireproof 
as possible. 

Bricks are made of clay. In places where there is the 
right kind of clay, brickyards are built. In a brickyard, 
workers loosen the clay with tractors. They use machine 
shovels to load the clay on cars, which are drawn to the clay 
mill by an engine. In the mill machinery grinds the clay to a 
fine powder. Machinery kneads a mixture of the ground 
clay and water. Machinery cuts the clay into bricks. 

All these things which the brickmaker of today does by 
machinery, the Egyptian brickmaker did by hand. The 
Egyptian baked his bricks in the sun. Today the bricks 
are baked in a huge kiln, or oven, which can hold thousands 
of bricks. The bricks are then loaded on barges and sent on 
their way from the brickyards to the builders. 

Stones Are Mineral Building Materials 

Wood is a plant material which helps the builder. Clay 
is a mineral which helps the builder. Stones which are also 
mineral are used in building. The stones most used in 
buildings today are granite, sandstone, slate, limestone, and 
marble. 





MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 171 


SOME BUILDING MATERIALS 



PAINT 


foundelt’ion 

walls 


CONCRETE 


TILE. 






















































172 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


Marble is a beautiful stone, but it does not stand rain or 
snow well. Builders in our country therefore use it mostly 
for the inner walls and stairways of buildings. 

Granite is hard and durable. Builders use granite for 
building foundations and for the outside walls of buildings. 
They also use sandstone, limestone, and slate. 

In parts of the world there are large stores of marble, 
granite, and other stones. In these places men cut large 
blocks of stone out of the mountain sides or out of pits in 
the earth. 

The mountains of Carrara in Italy are almost solid marble. 
In our own country many of the mountains in the northern 
part of New England are rich in marble and granite. A 
place from which stone is cut is called a quarry. 

In a stone quarry men use machine drills to bore deep holes 
into the rocks. These holes are charged with dynamite, and 
the explosions loosen the boulders. Stonecutters trim the 
rough stone for shipping. The trimmed stones are then 
hauled down to the railroad station or the river. The trans¬ 
portation of freight by water costs less than transportation on 
land. For this reason the heavy stones are usually shipped 
by water on barges for as much of the way as possible. 

In building with brick or stone, builders use a mixture 
called mortar. This mortar is made by adding sand and 
water to cement. Wet mortar put between the bricks or 
stones acts as a binder, holding them together. When the 
mortar dries, or sets, it becomes hard and helps make the 
wall strong and durable. 




MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 173 


Today some builders use another material to take the 
place of brick or stone. They build with concrete. Concrete 
is a mixture of cement, crushed stone, and water. The 
cement is made from lime and clay, baked and then ground 
into a very fine stone flour, or powder. This powder, crushed 
stone, and water are then put into a mixer made of steel. 
When this whole mass is thoroughly mixed, it becomes con¬ 
crete. 

To build with concrete, men make wooden or metal molds 
for the walls or foundations which they have planned. When 
the concrete is poured from the mixer into the molds, it 
gradually sets, or hardens. The molds are then removed. 
A concrete wall, especially if it has steel bars to reenforce 
and strengthen it, will last longer than a brick wall. It is 
about as strong as a stone wall. 

Steel, the Strong Material 

Now we come to a building material which is neither wood, 
nor brick, nor stone, nor concrete. This is steel. In the 
crowded cities, building lots are expensive. The builders 
in the cities, eager to build high so that many people can 
live over one building lot, could not depend on any of the 
old building materials. High buildings made of wood, brick, 
stone, or concrete might fall because of their own weight. 
With a steel framework high buildings can be erected with 
safety. 

Steel, which is a form of iron, was once rare and expensive 
— too expensive to be used in building. For thousands of 





174 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


years men used iron in tool-making. They obtained the iron 
for their tools from iron ore which they found in the earth. 
In iron ore the iron is mixed with rock and other impurities. 
The metal workers heated the ore in furnaces until the heat 
melted the ore and separated the liquid iron from the im¬ 
purities. This process is called smelting. After smelting the 
iron, ironworkers formed the iron into the shapes of the 
tools they wanted. These iron tools were rather brittle; 
and the ironworkers were glad to learn that if they could 
use greater heat in smelting the iron ore, they could get rid 
of more of the impurities. Finally by using very great heat 
and mixing the liquid iron with other minerals, the metal 
workers learned to make steel, which is a much better ma¬ 
terial than iron for many tools. 

But with the poor furnaces of long ago and with only wood 
for fuel, the metal workers were able to make very little good 
steel. Out in Asia, in the land of Arabia, there is a city called 
Damascus. This city became famous because of its steel 
makers, who made fine steel blades for springy swords and 
scimitars. In the time of Columbus, the soldiers of Europe 
prized these blades of Damascus. 

So for a long time steel was used, but it was only for 
making costly swords and daggers. Steel remained scarce 
and costly until about seventy-five years ago, when men 
learned how to make it more cheaply. Steel makers built 
huge furnaces in which hot blasts from burning coal are 
forced through molten iron. In a few minutes these hot 
blasts can convert tons of liquid iron into steel. 




MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 175 


In this country some of the largest iron and steel mills are 
found in the city of Pittsburgh in the state of Pennsylvania, 
in the city of Birmingham in the state of Alabama, in Buffalo 
in the state of New York, in Chicago in the state of Illinois, 
in Cleveland in the state of Ohio. These cities are good 
places for steel mills because they are near enough to the 
iron mines from which they get their iron ore; they are also 
near enough to the coal mines from which they get coal for 
their furnaces. The iron ore is brought to the mills by water. 
Trains from the coal mines run right into the yards of the 
mill. 

In a modern steel mill, there may be a long row of blast 
furnaces, each one making as much as eighty tons of steel 
at one heating. This liquid steel is run off into ladles, which 
pour it into molds. The molds shape the liquid into great 
red-hot lumps of steel called billets. One billet may weigh 
fifteen tons. 

The billets are carried along to rolls in the rolling mill. 
The rolls look like the rolls of a clothes wringer. The red- 
hot billet is squeezed through a set of rolls, and then back 
again, perhaps twenty times. It is now much longer. On it 
goes to the next set of rolls, where the same squeezing and 
rolling takes place over and over again. A billet which went 
into the rolling mills seven feet long may have been rolled 
into an eighty-foot steel column or a hundred-foot beam, 
ready to be cut to any length in the cutting room. 

Next, and last, these pieces of plain steel go to the bridge 
shops in just the right sizes for their use. Here the rivet 




176 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


holes are punched. Everything that can be done before 
the steel framework is set, is done here. From the bridge 
shops, the columns and beams, of many different shapes 
and strengths, all marked and numbered, go directly to the 
building where they are to be used. 



Setting a Steel Beam in Place 


Steel Made the Skyscraper Possible 
When men learned to make steel more cheaply in many 
shapes and sizes, steel that would not crack, nor shrink, nor 
wear out, the skyscraper became possible. So, about 1885, 
the first skyscraper appeared — ten stories high. Today, 
many of these first skyscrapers are being torn down and 
rebuilt to seventy and eighty stories. 

When we speak of a skyscraper, we usually mean a build¬ 
ing with its weight supported, not by its walls, but by a 
framework of steel hidden within the walls. This framework 












MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 177 


is made up of upright steel columns for the outside walls, 
which are supported at each floor by beams and girders. 

Beams are crosspieces of steel. A girder is a larger, 
heavier crosspiece which supports other beams. 

The framework is held together by steel rivets or by 
welding. 

A rivet looks like a thick blunt nail with a flat head. 
Each rivet is heated red-hot and placed in the rivet hole 
which was punched for it in the bridge shops. The rivet is 
driven through the beam to be riveted and the small end is 
hammered into a head so that it cannot come out. A rivet 
is stronger than a bolt because it is forced into the punch 
hole when red-hot and so Alls every part of the space and 
becomes almost a part of the beam itself. 

About 1926, men began to experiment with welding the 
framework instead of riveting. In welding, two pieces of 
metal are melted together by the heat from electricity. 

Before a skyscraper can be started, all the steel must be 
ordered from the mills, in the right sizes and shapes. It 
must be stored near by, so that it can be brought in as it is 
needed, for there is no place in our large cities to store such 
supplies. 

The one hundred and two stories of the Empire State 
Building in New York used more than 57,000 tons of steel. 
To prevent delay, the steel was ordered for two floors at a 
time two days before it was needed. The workmen had to 
be on schedule, so that they would be ready for each steel 
delivery when it came. About four floors of steel a week 





178 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


were set. Five months after the building was started, the 
steel framework was in place to the fiftieth story. 

This famous building used more than three hundred tons 
of a new kind of steel, called chrome nickel steel, for the 
outside trimming. This steel is tough and hard, yet it is 
easily workable. It will not rust. The Chrysler Building in 
New York has a cap of this bright steel. 

If you could follow the building of a great skyscraper from 
day to day, you would see something like this: 

As soon as the foundations are ready, truckloads of steel 
pieces arrive, in just the sizes needed, all numbered and 
ready. Uprights and beams are unloaded and placed near 
where they are to go. Bundles of beams weighing six or 
more tons are swung aloft by derricks or carried to their 
places by hoists like elevators. Later these hoists will carry 
the concrete, the bricks or stones, and the hollow tiles for 
the partitions. 

When the steel workers have set the framework for the 
second story, riveters begin to rivet the framework of the 
story below. This is done with great skill. One man stands 
at the forge, heats the rivets and tosses them with a pair of 
tongs to the riveters. The riveters place the rivets in the 
punch holes, drive them in, and head them over. 

As each story is set, it is inspected and the steel painted 
over with two coats to protect it from the air. 

Pipes are now laid and wires put in place, through which 
water and electricity will be supplied later. 

The concrete workers follow the riveters. They begin on 





MATERIALS FOR BUILDING THE HOUSE 179 


the story just riveted below them and lay the concrete 
ceiling of that story which is also the floor of the next. 

When the steel window frames are put in place, the masons 
and bricklayers begin to wall in each story. The inside 
workers are now protected and can go to work. In a climate 
like that of New York, it is important that the work move 
along on schedule time so that the outside will be finished 
before winter begins. The windowpanes are put in last. 

It is like a race; each kind of workman follows as soon as 
he can, and all try to reach the top in the time set. 

When the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York 
was torn down, samples of the old steel from different parts 
of the building were tested to see how much they had worn. 
In every case they were found to be practically as good as 
when they were set. This has been found to be true of other 
buildings. There seems to be no reason why the steel frame¬ 
work should not last several hundred years except that 
styles in buildings change and buildings are tom down long 
before their steel framework wears out. 


Things to Do 


1. Be very sure you understand the meanings of the words 
and phrases in the columns below. 


quarry furnaces 

explosion billets 

mortar rivets 

concrete mixture experiment 


girder 

framework 

columns 

derrick 


kiln 

welding 
inspected 
on schedule 


2. In the sentences below write on the blank line the word 
or words which make the statement correct. 



180 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


The largest iron and steel mills in America are found in 

_ _, in_, in_, and in_ 

Skyscrapers are built of_ 

The tallest building in the world is in_ 

It is_stories high. 

_tons of steel were used in building it. 

Skyscrapers were first built in the_ 

3. In the first column is the name of a material, in the second 
column the name of the country in which the material is found. 
Put the number before the country which you find in front of 
the product. 


1. Carrara marble 

Atlantic coast 

2. granite 

Pennsylvania 

3. lumber 

Italy 

4. redwood 

Northern New England 

5. iron ore 

California 






















Chapter 23 

FURNISHING THE HOME 

How many things it takes to furnish a home — beds and 
bureaus, tables and towels, rugs and rocking chairs, dishes 
and drinking cups, china closets and chests, pictures and 
plants. These are just a few of the many things which help 
to make our homes more comfortable. 

The hunters who lived in caves may have had little furni¬ 
ture, but they did have pictures. The pictures were paint¬ 
ings of the wild animals which they hunted. They painted 
these pictures on the walls and ceilings of their caves. 

The herdsman, living his nomad life, also had little furni¬ 
ture. He and his people slept on skins. They squatted on 
the earth or on woven mats. 

Clay Pots, Chinaware, and Glass 

When men long ago observed that clay was hardened by 
the heat from their fires, they shaped the soft clay into pots 
in which to store their grains. They hardened these clay 
pots by baking them in ovens which they built over their 
fires. 

In the beginning, clay pots were shaped by hand. Then 
some one invented a potter’s wheel, a stone set on an axle. 

Putting his clay on the stone, the potter turned the wheel; 

181 


182 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


and as the wheel turned, he used his hands to shape the 
clay into whatever form he chose to give it. 

The Egyptians often painted pictures on pots. So did 
the Greeks. Some of their clay pots, jars, and vases that 
have been buried for thousands of years have been dug up 
in the ruins of old cities. 

Today clay is used in making plates, saucers, and bowls. 
The finest of this ware is called chinaware, because hundreds 
of years ago only the Chinese knew how to make it. Now 
very good china ware is made in our own country. 

If we look at our china cups, we can see how smooth and 
shiny they appear. This shiny look is due to a glaze, or 
glassy substance, which covers the surface of the cup. A 
long time ago men learned the art of glazing pottery. The 
glaze which the early potters used may have helped men to 
learn how to make glass. Long ago the Phoenicians, who 
once lived on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, not far 
from Egypt, learned to make glass. But it was not until 
about the time of Columbus that people learned how to 
make glass so clear that one could see through it. 

For a long time transparent glass was so very expensive 
that most persons could not afford to buy it. But today 
glass factories make great quantities of glass, and it is not 
expensive. In glass factories sand and certain other minerals 
are heated together in a furnace. When this mixture melts, 
it becomes liquid glass; and as the liquid glass cools, it 
becomes sticky. Just here the work of the glass blower 
begins. He draws off some of the sticky glass into an iron 





FURNISHING THE HOME 


183 


pipe. He then blows through the pipe, and as he blows, the 
warm glass expands like a soap bubble. He now can shape 
this glass bubble by placing it in a mold. As he continues 
to blow, the glass takes the shape of the mold. 

In this way glass blowers can make jars, bottles, tumblers, 
and vases. But today machinery is used to do the blowing, 
and a single glassmakihg machine, with machine blowers and 
machine molds, can shape thousands of electric light bulbs 
in a day. 

Machinery is also used in making window glass. There is 
so much glass used for the windows in our buildings that we 
may well call glass one of the building materials. 

Furniture Was Once Rare and Expensive 

Before the days of Columbus, as you have just read, few 
people had any glassware, and they had no glass windows. 
In fact, up to the time of Columbus very few persons even 
had much wooden furniture, such as the chairs or tables or 
beds or bureaus or any of the other wooden furniture which 
we have today. The peasants, as the poorer farmers of 
Europe were called, sat on rough stools made by nailing a 
few boards together. Their tables were boards laid across 
wooden trestles. Their one most important piece of wooden 
furniture was the chest in which they stored their clothing, 
their food, and such few other things as they owned. When 
the colonists came to America, they brought these chests 
with them. 

But about the time when America was being settled, the 





184 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


rich people in Europe were thinking how they could make 
their homes more comfortable. They hired men to make 
them fine tables and better chairs, to put drawers in their 
chests. In these drawers the rich folk kept the linen table¬ 
cloths and the silver knives and forks which were coming 
into fashion. The furniture makers also made for the rich 
people great wooden beds, with four posts on which curtains 
were hung to keep out the cold winds. 

When the European settlers in the country began to pros¬ 
per, they also bought these new furnishings to make their 
homes more beautiful. For a long time only the rich colo¬ 
nists could afford these things; later the poorer people were 
able more and more to buy them. 

Today in many large cities in this country there are fac¬ 
tories in which men make furniture from lumber. With the 
machines in these factories helping to make wooden furniture 
more quickly, almost every one can have wooden beds, 
tables, chairs, bureaus, sideboards, bookcases, writing desks. 

Our Furnishings Have Stories 

Almost everything which we use to furnish our homes has 
a story. 

There is the story of Oriental rugs which we buy from the 
people of Asia. In the olden days, the weavers in India, 
Persia, and China wove mats, or rugs, which the people used 
instead of chairs. In time they learned to design these 
rugs so beautifully and to color them so richly that today 
people all over the world use them to decorate their homes. 





FURNISHING THE HOME 


185 

There is the story of knives, forks, and spoons — a story 
which begins with the hunters who used their fingers instead 
of forks. 

There is the story of the stove. This story begins when 
men first built outdoor fires to warm them and cook their 
foods. It tells us of the time when men learned to build 
fires indoors in open fireplaces, with chimneys to carry off 
the smoke. It carries us to our own day when people use 
coal, oil, and gas in stoves or in furnaces. In large homes and 
in apartment houses today, pipes carry steam, hot water, or 
hot air from a furnace in the cellar to heat all the rooms in 
the house. 

Another story is the story of the light in our homes. This 
story would tell how the people of long ago burned vegetable 
and animal oils in small lamps, and how our great-grand¬ 
mother made candles from fats and vegetable oils. It would 
tell how, less than a hundred years ago, people learned to 
use kerosene oil and gas. It would tell how now in our own 
day many homes are lighted by electricity. Even the match 
has a long story. 

The full story of all these things would take too long to 
tell. We will leave them to go on to the story of transporta¬ 
tion, so that we can see how all the things which we have in 
our homes are brought to us from the places where they are 
made. 

Things to Do 

1. Make a list of the things needed to make our homes com¬ 
fortable. 







186 


HOMES THE WORLD OVER 


2. Make a list of the materials used to make these things. 

3. Tell how man first invented dishes. 

4. The invention of pottery is very important. Can you tell 
why it is so important? Read this chapter carefully and see if 
you can discover anything we do today which we could not have 
done had man not learned to make clay into dishes. 

5. When you go on a camping trip, you take along the things 
you think you really must have to live comfortably. What 
are some of the house furnishings you take? 



PART VI 


BINDING THE WORLD: TRANSPORTATION — 
COMMUNICATION 

CHAPTER 

24. Carrying and Being Carried 

25. Buying and Selling: The Story of Trade 

26. Sending Messages: The Spoken Word, The 

Written Word, The Printed Word 

27. Sending Messages: Telegraph, Cable, Tele¬ 

phone, Wireless, Radio 


Chapter 24 

CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 

All through the day and night, wagons, cars, automobiles, 
ships, and trains are carrying people and things. We need 
these ways of carrying and being carried. Ships and trains 
carry people and goods from the farms to the cities, from 
city to city. They carry goods and people from the cities 
to the farms. They also carry people and goods all over 
our country and from our country to other countries. 

Man is not alone in his need of moving from place to place. 
Plants may get their food while rooted to one spot; but birds 
must fly, fish must swim, the animals of field and forest must 
roam about in search of food. 

Transportation in Wilderness Days 

In the days when all the world was a wilderness, men, like 
the animals of field and forest, had only their legs to carry 
them. The hunters returning with their loads carried their 
game on poles slung across their shoulders. To this day in 
many parts of the world people carry their burdens on their 
backs or on their heads. 

After a time, man tamed the horse and used it to carry 
him and his packs on long journeys. Camels carried traders 

and their goods across the deserts in Africa and Asia. The 

189 


190 


BINDING THE WORLD 


llama carried goods across the mountains of Peru in South 
America. The camel, the llama, and the horse are still 
used as beasts of burden. 

Long after man learned to use animals for carrying; some 
one, it may have been a herdsman in Asia, invented the 
wheel and the wheeled wagon. Wheels were a great help in 
carrying. Wagons could hold heavy loads, and with axles 
to help the wheels turn, horses or oxen could draw greater 
loads than they could carry on their backs. 

But even with wagons and animals to help, traveling and 
carrying goods by land was not easy. It took time to clear 
roads. When heavy rains made the roads muddy, it was 
almost impossible to move from place to place. 

Long before the wheel and the wagon were invented, some 
people saw that, if they could travel by water, they could 
move about more rapidly than they could through thick 
forests. Hunters and herdsmen may have crossed streams 
or even floated down streams on logs. They may have 
noticed that a log pointed at one end moves through the 
water more easily. Then some one may have seen that, if a 
log were hollowed out, it could carry things, and there would 
be less danger of tipping over. Poles could be used as 
paddles or oars to help in moving the log through the water. 
In some such way, step by step, men learned to use boats 
for moving from place to place. 

In our story of man’s conquest of the wilderness we read 
how the Egyptians learned to put sails on their boats, and 
how, with the wind to help them, they sailed up and down 




CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 


191 


the Nile River. Sailboats carried the knowledge of farming 
along the Mediterranean Sea to the countries of Europe. 
Guided by compasses, sailboats from Europe crossed the 
Atlantic Ocean and found America. Other sailboats brought 
many people from Europe to live in America. 

The Steamboat Is Invented 

Until one hundred years ago men used oars or the power 
of wind to make their boats move. Then people learned how 
to use the power of steam instead of oars and wind. 

Some one in England had made a steam engine. In this 
engine, the burning of wood and coal caused water to boil, 
and the force of the steam from the boiling water was used 
to work a pump, which pumped water out of coal mines. 

Soon men began to plan other ways of using the power of 
steam. 

One man, Robert Fulton by name, decided to use the force 
of steam to turn paddle wheels on the sides of a boat. 

In the year 1807, his boat was ready. He called it the 
Clermont. Many people called it '‘Fulton’s Folly.” 

Fulton tested his boat on the Hudson River. When the 
engine started, the steam-driven paddles turned in the water, 
and the boat moved upstream against the current at five 
miles an hour. Steam was taking the place of wind and oars. 

The first steamboats ran on rivers. But soon steamboats 
were running on lakes and seas and on the ocean as well. 
Today sailboats are still used, but most of the large boats 
on the rivers and lakes and oceans are steamboats. On most 





192 


BINDING THE WORLD 


of our steamboats the steam engine no longer turns side 
wheels. Instead, there is a powerful propeller on the rear 
of the boat. The engine turns the propeller, and then, as 
the propeller revolves, it drives the boat forward. 

Some of the ocean steamboats are like huge apartment 
houses. They have room for hundreds of people, who live 
on the boats for days and weeks. One of these boats has 
dining rooms, sleeping rooms, a music room, tennis courts, 
a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a barber shop, a children's 
toy and game room. Ocean steamships carry thousands of 
tons of goods besides the passengers. 

There are many steamboats which carry people and goods 
across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Some of these boats 
go through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean 
Sea, past Italy and Greece and Turkey to Egypt. 

There are steamboats which go down the Atlantic coast 
of the United States to Cuba and the other islands near 
Cuba. Some sail farther south to the countries of South 
America. Some go into the Pacific Ocean by way of the 
Panama Canal, which engineers have cut through the nar¬ 
row piece of land which connects North and South America. 
In this way these steamboats can more quickly reach the 
Pacific coast countries of North and South America. 

Many steamships go from the Pacific coast cities to Japan, 
China, India, and Australia. 





CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 


193 


The Steam Locomotive 

Until the time of the steamboat, carrying by land re¬ 
mained the same as it had been since the days of the first 
pack animals and the first wagons drawn by animals. But 
now, seeing how an engine could turn the wheels of a boat on 
water, men built steam engines to turn the wheels of wagons 
on land, and they laid rails on the roads, so that the wheels 
would turn more easily. The front wagon, which carried the 
steam engine, was called a steam locomotive. This loco¬ 
motive pulled a long train of carriages or cars. The road of 
rails was called a railroad. 

In this country about the year 1830 a railroad was built 
from Baltimore to a village twelve miles away. Soon many 
more miles of railroad were built. 

On these early railroads little steam locomotives pulled a 
few curious-looking carriages. The engines used wood for 
fuel. The sparks from the engines flew back over the pas¬ 
sengers. The carriages were poorly heated by small wooden 
stoves and lighted with oil lamps. The rate of travel was 
about twelve miles an hour. Some of you may have seen 
one of these old trains in the balcony of the Grand Central 
Station at New York City. 

Today a steam locomotive is a huge and beautiful machine 
weighing many tons. It burns coal or oil. It can pull ten 
or fifteen passenger cars at high speed and many more 
freight cars loaded with goods. Some of the freight cars, 
called refrigerator cars, have ice to keep cool and fresh the 





194 


BINDING THE WORLD 


fruits or meat which they carry. Some are heated to keep 
vegetables from the south from freezing on their way north.. 

Some of the passenger trains, called Pullmans, have sleep¬ 
ing berths. The trains also have dining cars. Almost all 
trains today are well heated and are lighted by electricity. 

Railroads and steamboats have helped carry men into the 
West to tame the American wilderness. They have bound 
the whole country into one. They carry the farmers’ crops 
to the city. They carry manufactured goods from the cities 
to the farms. 

New Ways of Carrying and Being Carried 

As the railroads and steamships carried people into the 
country, the number of farms increased, but at the same 
time the cities kept on growing. The people in the cities 
had to go miles and miles to get to their work. A way was 
found to carry them. Some men learned how to use electric 
current to turn the wheels of electric cars. These electric 
cars, running along tracks in the city streets, carried men 
and women to their work. The electric power which turns 
the wheels of the cars comes through wires or rails from the 
electric power house. 

About forty years ago some people found a way of making 
a car which would not need tracks. They invented small 
gasoline motors which would make their own power. They 
put these motors into their cars, and so automobiles were 
born. Today one man out of every five in this country owns 
an automobile. Automobiles and automobile trucks are a 




CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 195 


great help to the farmer. They help carry his goods to the 
railroad station or to the near-by town. They help him bring 
home the things which he buys in the city. Automobiles 
are now so common that it is perhaps hard for you to realize 
that they were just beginning to be seen on the streets when 
your parents were children. 



Forging a Steel Axle for an Automobile 


The latest way of carrying things is by airplane or by 
dirigible. The sea is a good road. The land road is good. 
But it seems that the great new road is the air. With a 
gasoline motor in his airplane or dirigible, man can ride 
anywhere. 

Our airships are not perfect yet. The first successful 
flights in the air were made about twenty years ago. By 
1924 airplanes flew around the world, as you read in the 
first chapter. In that same year a dirigible came from Ger¬ 
many across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. Air- 











196 


BINDING THE WORLD 


ports and landing fields are being built in many parts of the 
world. Our own country has nearly two thousand, and 
nearly eight hundred more are planned. Today there is air 
travel by day and by night. For night travel flying fields 
have to be well lighted. There are airports along both the 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts, for flying between ocean liners 
and the shore. At Oakland, California, there is an airport 
bringing together rail and air lines across the continent, 
and ship lines across the ocean. Planes that can take off 
from land or water have direct contact with steamships. 

You have all heard of Colonel Lindbergh’s famous flight 
across the Atlantic Ocean, how he flew alone in his plane 
which he called The Spirit of St. Louis. His plane was 
named for the city of St. Louis, which is in the state of 
Missouri. In St. Louis, there is a flying field where much 
flying is done both for pleasure and as a means of travel. 
During June and July, 1930, it is said that 14,300 passengers 
left Lambert Field, the St. Louis flying field, and 15,000 
passengers arrived. 

At the Grand Central Terminal Airport in Los Angeles, 
California, during the first six months of 1930, 25,608 pas¬ 
sengers landed in Los Angeles. During the busiest day 253 
airplane passengers arrived in this city. 

Airports are now scattered over every state in the United 
States. California leads with 154; Texas has 101; Pennsyl¬ 
vania, 85; Ohio, 76; Iowa, 45; Michigan, 44; Florida, 41; 
Virginia, 32; Massachusetts, 23; Connecticut, 10. 

Some of these are for purposes of carrying passengers and 





CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 


197 


goods. But there are many airports owned and operated 
by the governments of the states and the United States, for 
purposes of carrying messages and transacting important 
business for the Army and Navy, and for other departments 
of the government. 

All over the world this new way of traveling is fast being 
made safe. England, France, Germany, and Italy had well- 
developed commercial flying before Lindbergh’s flight to 
France created a new interest in air travel in America. 

When airships become safer and can carry larger loads, 
they may take the place of ships and railroads. Even now 
United States mail is carried by airplanes from the Atlantic 
coast to the Pacific coast. 

The Story Briefly Retold 

Now, if we look back at our story of transportation, we 
see that until about one hundred years ago men were using 
wagons and animals on land, sailships on the water. They 
could not carry things in the air. Suddenly there came the 
steam engine, the electric engine, and the gasoline motor, 
which made travel on sea and land swifter. Then the gaso¬ 
line motor opened up traveling by air. 

With the coming of the railroad, hundreds of thousands of 
miles of good steel track have been laid across the lands of 
the earth. With the coming of the steamship, traders have 
been able to set up trading posts in almost every corner of 
the world. With the coming of the automobile, men have 
built hundreds of thousands of miles of good highroads. 




198 


BINDING THE WORLD 


binding the farms and cities of our land. With the coming 
of the airplane, airports and landing fields are rapidly in¬ 
creasing, making distances shorter, because flying is the 
fastest method of travel. 

With all these aids to travel and to the carrying of goods, 
the whole world has been brought near to us. Any one who 
saves enough can travel around the world. Any one who does 
his share of the world’s work can earn enough to buy food 
and clothes and things for his home which have been brought 
to him from the four corners of the earth. 

Things to Do 

1. Draw a series of pictures showing man’s ways of travel¬ 
ing on land. 

2. Draw a series of pictures showing man’s ways of travel¬ 
ing on the water. 

3. If you cannot draw well enough to make these pictures, 
you would find collecting them from old magazines very inter¬ 
esting. Mount them and place them around your classroom 
to help you in your study of this chapter. 

4. Write a short story of the invention of the first steam¬ 
boat, telling who invented it, when, its name, and an account 
of its first journey. 

5. On your outline map of the world trace the route traveled 
by a ship going from New York City to England; from New 
York City to Italy; from Italy to Egypt. Trace the route 
traveled by a ship going from New York City to the western 
coast of South America. 

6. Find out how long it would take to make any of the trips 
you have traced on your map. Travel folders published by 
steamship companies will help you with this lesson. 






CARRYING AND BEING CARRIED 


199 


7. On your outline map of the world locate the Atlantic 
Ocean; the Pacific Ocean; the Straits of Gibraltar; the Medi¬ 
terranean Sea; the Panama Canal. 

8. Write a short story of the earliest locomotives. 

9. Write a short story of the airplane. 

10. On your outline map make a dot or a star with your blue 
pencil showing the locations of the largest airports in the United 
States. 





Chapter 25 

BUYING AND SELLING: THE STORY 
OF TRADE 

We have just read how the ships and trains of our country 
are carrying goods from the farms to the cities and from the 
cities to the farms. We have read how ships and trains are 
helping to carry goods from one country to another. Most 
of these ships and trains are carrying goods from people 
who wish to sell to people who wish to buy. The buying and 
selling of goods is called trade. 

Buying and Selling Today 

The farmers who produce more food than they need for 
themselves sell the remainder to the cities. The city people 
who produce more clothes and tools than they need, sell the 
remainder to the farmers. But, as a rule, the farmer does 
not sell his wheat directly to the people living in the city. 
The farmer and the city dweller buy the things they need 
from stores where the storekeepers have laid in a stock of 
goods for them to buy. 

How does the farmer get the money with which he buys 
from the stores? When the farmer sells the crops from his 
fields, the animals from his barn, milk, butter, chickens, 

eggs, or cheese to the cities, he receives money in return. In 

200 


BUYING AND SELLING 


201 


the same way, when the city people sell the farmer goods 
made in their factories, they receive money in return. All 
people receive money for their work, and then they use this 
money to help them in their trading. 

In all this buying and selling, ships, trains, wagons, and 
automobiles are carrying money and goods back and forth 
between the farms and the cities. Ships and trains carry 
money and goods from all over the world to the large cities 
and to the storekeepers, who make their living by buying 
and selling. 

Today the farmer in the country buys the city goods from 
the country store, which has a stock of almost anything from 
a pin to a phonograph. When he reads the advertisements 
in the newspapers or magazines about goods sold in the city 
stores, he sometimes buys these things by mail. He sends his 
letter and money to the city store, and the city store sends 
him the goods by parcel post. 

Many farmers have mail-order catalogs in their homes. 
This catalog has a list of things which a mail-order store in 
the city has to sell. The catalog also has pictures of these 
things and the prices of each. If the farmer and his wife 
need any of these things, they send their order and money 
to the mail-order store in the big city. The mail-order store 
sends them what they order. 

The people who live in the cities buy from many different 
kinds of stores. They may buy hats from a hat store, food 
from the grocery and the meat market, furniture from a 
furniture store; or they may buy the different things they 



202 


BINDING THE WORLD 


need from a department store, which is like a country store, 
except that it is much larger. 

A city department store sells almost everything. In the 
department store there is a grocery department, a meat de¬ 
partment, a furniture department, a clothing department, 
a toy department, and many more departments, each of 
which may be as large as the smaller stores scattered through 
the city. 

Many of the stores do not buy the things they sell directly 
from the farmers or the factories. They buy from other 
stores, called wholesale stores, which buy very large quantities 
of goods at a time. A small grocery store may buy ten 
hundred pounds of sugar from a wholesale sugar merchant, 
who keeps great quantities of sugar in his wholesale store. 
The wholesale dealer buys the sugar from a sugar refinery. 
The sugar refinery buys its raw sugar from sugar plantations. 
This is how people trade today, but people did not always 
trade in this way. 

Trading in the Older Days 

Trade has a story, just as transportation has a story. 
This is the story of trade. 

The early hunters had little need for trade. They hunted 
for their own food and clothes. 

When some men became herdsmen and others became 
farmers, and still others lived in towns and cities, people had 
to trade. 

Some hunters may have wanted wool from the herdsmen. 




BUYING AND SELLING 


203 


Some herdsmen may have wanted furs from the hunters. 
When the herdsmen did not have enough wild grain, they 
wanted the good grain raised by the farmers. The farmers 
who raised more grain than they needed, wanted clothes 
woven by weavers in the towns and cities. 

In the beginning, when the people wanted things from one 
another, they often tried to get them by force. The armed 
hunters tried to steal from the herdsmen. Fighting herds¬ 
men came into the farming countries to steal grain from the 
farmers who had stored it up in barns. The sailors who sailed 
from the cities in the farming countries set out in ships to 
rob the people of other countries. 

People fought to defend their goods against the robbers, 
and in the battles many lost their lives, but in time some 
people learned that it is better to exchange goods peacefully 
than for both sides to kill each other. 

Trading by Exchange of Goods 
These wiser ones took to trading. The first trading was 
done by exchanging goods. Somewhere between the forest 
homes of the hunters and the pastures of the herdsmen, men 
would meet to exchange furs for wool. Somewhere between 
the pasture lands of the herdsmen and the tilled fields of the 
farmers, men would meet to exchange wool for grain. In 
Egypt the farmers came to the towns to exchange part of 
their grain for the things made by the workers in the cities. 

In the earliest days of trade exchanging goods was not 
always easy. 





204 


BINDING THE WORLD 


Let us imagine an Egyptian farmer who comes to town 
with ten bushels of grain, in exchange for which he wants one 
new pot. He finds the potter displaying his wares on the 
street in front of his shop. The potter has all the grain he 
needs. How can they exchange? 

“Take my fine grain,” says the farmer, “and give me that 
stupid pot.” 

Says the potter, “I do not need poor grain; I need some 
good bricks to repair my kiln.” 

The farmer answers: ‘ ‘ Give me the pot. A bricklayer will 
give you bricks for my grain.” 

This is good advice, the potter agrees, but it turns out that 
the bricklayer has all the grain he needs. He wants some 
good linen, and he will not take grain for his bricks. What 
is the potter to do? 

The potter has to find a linen weaver who needs grain. 
He exchanges the grain which he does not need for some 
linen which he does not need; then he exchanges the linen 
which he does not need for the bricks which he does need; 
and so the farmer, the potter, the brickmaker, and the linen 
weaver all exchange what they own for what they need. 

Gold Provided a Useful Means of Exchange 

This kind of trading by exchange was a roundabout 
business. 

After a time people in Egypt found an easier way. They 
used gold in their trading. Gold was something which people 
were always glad to receive in exchange for anything. This 




BUYING AND SELLING 


205 


rare metal, found in the mountains, took up little room; it 
did not spoil, it could be hidden away easily. Besides, the 
jewelers were always wanting gold for the ornaments which 
they were making for the ruler, or Pharaoh, and the nobles 
of Egypt. 

With gold to help in trading, some men now spent their 
lives in trading. These traders did not make things. They 
bought from those who wanted to sell. They sold to those 
who wanted to buy. In their buying and selling, they used 
gold. 

There was one trouble with gold. A dishonest trader 
might cheat. He might mix poor metal with good gold. To 
make sure that they were getting good gold, the traders 
had to weigh the gold and test it in every exchange they 
made. 

The constant weighing and testing of the gold was a 
bother, but for a long time men could think of no better 
way. Then a king named Croesus, who ruled in a land near 
Egypt, had gold melted down and made into coins, which 
he stamped with his seal. Each coin weighed just so much 
and was just so pure. When a trader took a gold coin in 
trade, he did not have to weigh and test it. The king's seal 
was enough. From that day on, gold, silver, copper, and 
other metals have been made into coins which help people 
in the cities in their buying and selling. 

In the country gold and silver were scarce; so much of the 
trading still had to be done through exchange. When the 
white people came to this country, they found some of 







206 


BINDING THE WORLD 


the Indians using beads for coins. The beads were made of 
shells. For a long time the newcomers in our country had 
very few gold or silver or copper coins. In their trading 
they used wampum beads, as the Indians did, or they used 
tobacco and furs for money. Often they exchanged goods, 
very much as the Egyptian potter and the brickmaker ex¬ 
changed goods. The farmer paid the furniture maker with 
corn. The furniture maker who received more corn than he 
needed, exchanged some of his corn with a fisherman who 
caught more fish than he needed. 

But here, as in Egypt, people found it hard to buy and sell 
without metal coins to help. So, when the people set up 
their own government, the United States of America, the 
government made gold, silver, and copper coins, and stamped 
them with the government seal. 

Still, gold was scarce in this country until the year 1849, 
about the time of our great-grandfathers. At that time men 
found gold in the bed of a river in California. Others found 
gold near by. At once there was a great rush of people to 
the ‘gold fields.’ Later, gold was found in other parts of the 
West and in Alaska, too. Some of this gold was gathered up 
with the river soil and held in a sieve in the running water. 
The water carried off. the earth and left the heavy particles 
of gold. Today gold is obtained from the mountains by 
mining. 

All this gold helped trade. With gold, men paid workers 
to build more of the new steamboats and railroads and fac¬ 
tories. With gold, men paid for new tools which helped the 





BUYING AND SELLING 


207 


factories make things more quickly. Many men put their 
gold together to form wholesale trading companies. Some 
of these trading companies were soon carrying on trade with 
all parts of the United States. There are trading companies 
which carry on trade with all parts of the world. 

To help in all the trade which is going on, there are banks 
where people can deposit their money. These banks lend 
some of the money to farmers, to factory owners, and to 
merchants. 

The farmers use the money which they borrow to help 
them raise the crops which they sell. Then they pay the 
money back to the banks. 

Factory owners use money which they borrow to help 
them buy raw material, and with it they pay wages to their 
workers. When they have sold their goods, they pay back 
to the bank what they have borrowed. 

Merchants often borrow money from banks, so that they 
can buy goods from the farmers or from factory owners. 
When the merchants have sold the goods, they pay off their 
bank loan. 

People who deposit their money in business banks pay for 
the goods they buy by check. The check is a paper which 
tells how much money the depositor wants the bank to pay 
out. It also tells to whom the money is to be paid. 

Today if we wish to travel anywhere in the world, we do 
not have to carry all our money with us. We can leave it in 
our bank at home. The bank arranges that we can get our 
money in any country which we visit. 




208 


BINDING THE WORLD 


The banks also arrange for payments made by companies 
in our land to farmers, factory owners, or merchants in other 
lands. 

So today the whole world is like one market place in which 
men are buying and selling. By this buying and selling, the 
wares of all the lands are brought to our doors. 

Questions to Answer 

1. How did people carry on trade in ancient times? 

2. Who invented the first coin, or piece of money? 

3. Why was this invention important? 

4. What did the American Indian give the white people in 
exchange for tobacco and furs? 

5. How is buying and selling carried on today? 

6. When we travel to a foreign country, do we have to take 
money with us? 

7. What better way can be arranged for us than to carry 
money? How do we do this? 




Chapter 26 


SENDING MESSAGES: THE SPOKEN WORD, 
THE WRITTEN WORD, THE PRINTED WORD 

It is evening. Mother is reading her newspaper. Father 
is reading a business letter. John is calling his sister to show 
her a picture in his book. 

The words which John is speaking, the writing which 
father is reading, the printing which mother is reading, all are 
ways of carrying messages. 

John’s spoken words carry a message from his mind to 
the mind of his sister who hears them. The written words 
in the letter carry a message from the mind of the man who 
wrote them to the mind of John’s father. The printed words 
in the newspaper carry a message to John’s mother. 

We need ways of sending messages, so that people can 
work together to get food, clothes, and shelter. 

People need to talk to one another about their work. They 
must write to one another about business. They have to 
learn about the world from books, magazines, and news¬ 
papers. 

Within the last hundred years, men have invented new 
ways of sending messages: the telegraph, the telephone, 
the cable, the wireless, radios, and motion pictures. In the 

next chapter we shall describe these new ways of sending 

209 


210 


BINDING THE WORLD 


messages. In this chapter we shall read how the spoken 
word, the written word, the printed word, came to be. 

The Spoken Word 

The story of the sending of messages begins when all the 
world was still a wilderness and people were first learning 
to put their thoughts into words. As people discovered the 
power of speech, those who lived in different countries in¬ 
vented names for the things around them. Thus people who 
lived in one valley would call a tree by a different name than 
those who lived in the next valley. In this way it happened 
that each land had its own language, and each language was 
like a code which could be understood only by those who 
had learned it. 

The different languages which people invented have come 
down to us, with new words which have been added from 
time to time. Today people are still adding new words to 
the languages which they speak. 

Almost all the people in our country speak English. In 
England the people also speak English, but their way of 
speaking it is a little different from our way. Even within 
our own country people in different parts of the land speak 
in somewhat different ways. 

In most of the lands which lie south of the United States, 
people speak Spanish. Most of the people in Canada speak 
English, but in some parts of Canada people speak French. 
The English language was brought to this country and to 
Canada from England. The French language was brought 





SENDING MESSAGES 


211 


to Canada from France. The Spanish language was brought 
from Spain to Mexico and to the many countries south of 
Mexico, although in some South American countries the 
Portuguese language is spoken. 

For a long time after people learned to speak, they did not 
know how to write; but then some people who wanted to 
send messages drew pictures on wood or on animal skins, 
and these pictures carried their thoughts to others. The 
Indians in this country still use picture language for writing, 
and they can read a letter drawn with picture signs. 

The Written Word 

In time the people in some countries learned to use an 
alphabet for writing. They invented a code of signs to stand 
for different sounds like A, B, and C, and with these signs 
they spelled out words. So the art of writing was born. 
Any one who learned the signs of the alphabet had a code 
with which he could spell words and send letters in writing. 
Some men now wrote their messages with brushes on animal 
skins or on a paper made from the stalks of plants. 

Sending messages by writing helped people. Before writ¬ 
ing was invented, people could teach only by the spoken 
word, which might be poorly remembered or even forgotten. 
When people could write books about the things they did 
and about the things they learned, their books preserved 
their thoughts exactly as they wrote them down. In this 
way knowledge was carried to all persons who could read. 

For thousands of years books were written by hand, and 




212 


BINDING THE WORLD 


all copies of books were made by hand. For this reason 
books were expensive. Few people could afford to buy them. 
Few people knew how to read. 

The Printed Word 

About five hundred years ago, about the time when 
Columbus was born, some men learned how to make copies 
of books by printing them. They cut letters out of wood. 
They put these letters together to form words and sentences 
until they had a whole page. They used a printing press 
to print many copies of this page from the one page. In this 
way they were able to print many hundreds of books in less 
time than it would have taken to write out one copy by hand. 
They printed their books on paper made from linen fiber. 
You will learn more about books in Chapter 30. 

One thing which helps in the printing of our millions of 
books, magazines, and newspapers is the way in which paper 
is made today. Until a short time ago most paper was made 
by hand from rags. Today paper is made in paper mills from 
logs. 

Near the paper mills there are great piles of logs which 
have been floated down from the forests. In the mills, ma¬ 
chines grind these logs into small chips. Tons of these chips 
are poured into metal tanks, containing powerful acids. 
Trees, like many other plants, have fine fibers running 
through them. As the acids break up the woody fibers in 
the chips, the fibers change to a soft, wet mush, called pulp. 

To see what pulp is like, we can tear a piece of paper into 






SENDING MESSAGES 


213 


shreds, soak the shreds in water, then squeeze them into a 
small mass. 

When the pulp has been made very fine by other machines 
in the mill, it enters the paper-making machines. It flows 
on to this machine, mixed with water, one hundred parts of 
water to one part of pulp. As this liquid mixture flows 
along a sort of metal apron through which many holes are 
punched, the water drains off, and the wood fibers in the 
pulp join to form a long sheet of paper about six feet broad. 
As this sheet moves on, it is dried by heat. At the far end 
of the machine, the paper is wound up in rolls. There are 
five miles of paper to a roll. 

We need this quick way of making paper for the printing 
presses of today, because our huge newspaper presses can 
print as many as one thousand newspapers a minute. 

The men who set up the type for newspapers are helped 
by a machine called the linotype machine. As they type on 
this machine, metal letters fall into place. Each line of these 
metal letters then drops into a pool of liquid metal, where a 
mold of the line is made. 

Carrying Words by Mail 

Before the day of the steamship and the railroad, letters, 
books, newspapers, and magazines could carry their messages 
only as fast as sailing ships, horses, or carriages drawn by 
horses could take them. In this country the government 
established the Post Office, to send mail from one part of 
the country to another, but in the early days it took days 




214 


BINDING THE WORLD 


for a letter or newspaper from New York to reach Boston. 
It took weeks for mail to be carried from New York to 
Chicago. It took months for mail to cross the continent. 
The cost was so great that little mail was sent. 

Today trains running from the Atlantic coast of our coun¬ 
try carry mail across the continent in four days. The cost 
of sending a letter this distance is two cents. With steam¬ 
ships to help, the United States mail carries letters halfway 
around the world for two cents. 

In our schools, boys and girls learn how to use spoken 
words. They learn how to spell and to write. They learn 
how to read. Being able to speak well, to write well, and 
to read well, not only will help them to do their share of the 
world’s work, but will help them to learn about the work 
done in all parts of the world. 

Things to Do 

1. All the words in the list below have to do with communi¬ 
cation. First, be very sure that you know what communication 
means, then tell in what way these words have to do with 
communication. If you can do this, you have learned a great 
deal from this chapter. 

telegraph code letters newspapers 

telephone reading books paper 

wireless telegraphy radio-telephony pictures telegram 

radio messages spelling conyersation 

cable language magazines writing 

2. Find how many boys and girls in your class have had ex¬ 
perience with different ways of communicating. 





Chapter 27 


SENDING MESSAGES: TELEGRAPH, CABLE, 
TELEPHONE, WIRELESS, RADIO 

Howard, who lives in the country, is not helping his father 
today. Early this morning he went down the road to watch 
linemen fasten telegraph wires to wooden crossbars on an 
old tree. Howard's father gave the men permission to cut 
branches from the tree and to. put up the wires which will 
run from the great city to the near-by village. 

Howard’s father knows that the telegraph helps to bind 
the farms and villages, the towns and cities, in our broad land 
into one united nation. 

It is less than one hundred years since a few men began to 
see that the people in our country who were living thousands 
of miles apart needed swift and sure ways of sending mes¬ 
sages through space. These men began to experiment with 
new ways of sending messages, and it was out of their experi¬ 
ments that the telegraph, the telephone, and the cable were 
born. 

Old Methods of Signaling 

Long ago, people used columns of smoke from hilltop fires, 
or the beating of drums, as signals to friends who were far 
away. Some wilderness peoples still use these means of 

signaling. But for the million and one messages which the 

215 


216 


BINDING THE WORLD 


people in our country had to send, they needed the new in¬ 
ventions. 

Mr. Morse and the Telegraph 
While still in college, one American, Samuel F. B. Morse, 
learned of the experiments which men were making with 
electricity. Years later he formed the idea that the electric 
current passing through wires could be used to carry mes¬ 
sages from a sending instrument to a receiving instrument. 
By pressing a button in the sending instrument, the electric 
current, passing through the wire, would make a mark or 
cause a click in the receiving instrument. He made up a 
code in which a short stroke would stand for a dot, and a 
longer stroke would stand for a dash. A dot and a dash 
would stand for A; a dash and three dots would be B, and 
so on all through the alphabet. , 

In the year 1844, with money voted by Congress, Mr. 
Morse built a line of wires. His plan was tested and proved 
successful. The first message to be carried in this way was 
'‘What Hath God Wrought.” 

This way of sending messages is called the telegraph, a 
word which means “write at the end.” Today there are 
millions of miles of telegraph wires carrying messages over 
the lands of the earth. Before the telegraph, it often took 
weeks and even months for people in the eastern part of our 
country to know what was happening in the west. The 
telegraph now carries messages almost within the minute. 






SENDING MESSAGES 


217 


Mr. Field and the Ocean Cable 

Telegraph wires, bound in heavy cables, also carry mes¬ 
sages under the oceans. In the year 1858, through the work 
of Cyrus Field, the first successful cable was laid across the 
Atlantic. Mr. Field felt that we should have such a cable, 
and that it would work. He persuaded people to give money 
for laying it. Twice cables had been laid as he suggested, 
and twice they had failed, but the third time the cable 
worked. Farmers, merchants, bankers, factory owners, 
government officers in this country were able to send mes¬ 
sages to Europe and to receive them. 

Today there are eight Atlantic cables from the United 
States to Europe. There are cables from the United States 
to Asia. There is a cable from the United States, down 
under the Atlantic, to South America. In South America 
this cable continues from the Atlantic Ocean across the 
continent to the Pacific Ocean. To reach the Pacific, the 
cable had to be carried across the high Andes Mountains. 

Mr. Bell and the Telephone 

The telegraph and the cable transmit written messages. 
Other inventors found ways of carrying the sound of the 
voice through space. 

In the year 1876 Alexander Graham Bell showed people 
in the city of Philadelphia an instrument by means of which 
people could speak through space. It was the telephone. 
In the telegraph the electric current in wires carried the 



218 


BINDING THE WORLD 


message in code. The telephone wires carry the message 
of the voice itself. 

Today in onr country and in many other lands, people 
have telephones in their homes and in their offices. They use 
the telephone again and again throughout the day to speak 
to people in their own towns or in distant towns and cities. 

Throughout each day millions of business messages are 
being sent in this way by means of the telephone. 

The Wireless and the Radio 
Only a short while ago inventors found a way of sending 
messages without the aid of wires. Men now flash wireless 
code messages across land and water. Wireless has been 
especially useful to ships at sea. 

The latest invention for sending messages is the radio, 
which is a wireless way of carrying the voice through space. 
This is called radio-telephony. 

Something about Distances and Costs 
Distance makes little difference in telephone calls among 
the countries of the world. The distance a voice travels 
between New York and London is about 3600 miles. From 
San Francisco to Oslo, Norway, the voice passes one-third 
of the way around the world in less than a quarter of a 
second. A call between Mexico City and Madrid in Spain 
follows a path of more than 7700 miles. 

The United States has telephone connections with 29 
countries. Great Britain can talk with 37 countries and 




SENDING MESSAGES 


219 


France with 36. The number is growing so rapidly that 
within a very short time these facts will be out of date. 

You may like to know how much it costs to talk to some 
one across the Atlantic Ocean. When men first began to 
talk across the ocean by means of a telephone without wires, 
a call between London and New York cost $75 for the first 
three minutes, with $25 for each additional minute. These 
rates have been steadily reduced until in May, 1930, the 
rates were $30 for the first three minutes and $10 for each 
additional minute. 

Not only can persons talk between two cities, but it is 
possible for a person on board a moving steamer to talk with 
some one on shore. Conversations are carried on daily be¬ 
tween passengers on the great ocean liners, the Leviathan, 
the Majestic, the Olympic, and their relatives and friends 
at home. Like all long-distance telephoning, the cost of 
these ship-to-shore conversations varies with distance. 

There is also under way a project for a radio-telephone 
station on the Pacific coast near San Francisco, through 
which telephone service will reach to the Hawaiian Islands 
and westward to Australia and the countries of the Far East. 

Many other countries of the world are extending their 
radio-telephone service thousands and thousands of miles 
from their homes. 

Something to Do 

If you have read this chapter carefully, you will be able to 
write on the blank lines in the following sentences the word 
or words which make these statements correct. 





220 


BINDING THE WORLD 


1. The telegraph is a method of sending a message over a 

wire by_ 

2. The telegraph was invented by_in the year 

3. Messages can be carried on the ocean by_The 

first_was laid across the_, through the 

work of_in the year_ 

4. The telephone is an instrument through which two persons 

can_ 

5. _invented the first telephone in the year 

6. The United States has telephone connections with_ 

-countries. 

7. Talking to some one across the ocean by telephone with¬ 
out wires is called_ 

8. The distance a voice travels between New York and 

London is about_miles. 





















PART VII 

TOOLS THAT HELP IN THE WORLHS WORK 

CHAPTER 

28. How Man Uses Tools to Increase His Power 

29. Copper, Iron, Steel, Coal, and Oil Make Tools 

Possible 

30. Books as Tools 



Chapter 28 

HOW MAN USES TOOLS TO INCREASE 
HIS POWER 

When workers are busy putting up a steel building in the 
city, many people stop to watch them and the giant tools 
which they use. Here a great steel beam, weighing tons, is 
being lifted hundreds of feet. Two men are on the beam, 
but they have no fear. They know that the man at the 
engine has pulled the lever which started wheels going; 
those wheels are pulling a cable which runs around a pulley 
above them, down to the beam which they are riding. They 
know that the engine, the wheel, the pulley, and the cable 
have all been tested. They have faith in these tools which 
are helping them in their work. 

Wherever we look, in our homes, on farms, on country 
roads, in city streets, in factories, stores, and offices, we see 
people using tools to help them. 

In our story of the taming of the wilderness, we read about 
some of the ways in which tools help man. Without tools 
the wilderness people could never have defended themselves 
against fierce animals. Without tools men could never have 
turned the wilderness into towns and cities. Tools helped 
men by increasing their power many times over. 

When the hunters found that their hands were not strong 

enough to kill their enemies, they made themselves wooden 

223 


224 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


clubs. Clubs gave a longer reach to men’s arms. They gave 
more force to men’s blows. 

When men threw stones, the reach of their arms increased. 
When they used bows to throw arrows, the reach and force 
of their arms increased still more. Later they learned to use 
guns and cannon to hurl shot at their enemies. Today a 
cannon can throw a cannon ball many miles. 

Just as men made tools to do what their arms could not 
do in throwing, they made tools to do what their legs could 
not do in walking. They made tools to do what their backs 
could not do in carrying. They made tools to do what their 
hands could not do in plowing the earth, in gathering the 
harvest, in grinding grain, in sowing, in cutting down trees, 
in sawing trees into lumber, and in many other tasks. 

Women also had tools, such as needles, which helped them 
in sewing. They had spindles and looms to do what their 
unaided hands could not do in spinning and weaving. 

In the early days when men were hunters and herdsmen, 
they made their simple tools of wood, stone, or bone. Later 
men learned to make tools of copper, bronze, iron, and steel. 

With metal, men made axes and saws to cut down the 
forests. With wood cut from the forests, men made wheels 
which helped them carry their goods; they made ships to 
be rowed by oars or driven by the wind. 

We have read how ships brought people from Europe to 
America. The same ships also brought to America many 
of the tools which these people had been using in Europe. 

With these tools to help them, the white people prospered 




USING TOOLS TO INCREASE POWER 225 


in America. By the year 1776 the people in our country 
were strong enough to declare themselves free from the rule 
of a king in Europe. So the United States of America, a new 
nation, was born to take its place among the nations of the 
world. 

In 1776 our nation was new, but most of the tools which 
men used at that time were old. They were like the hand 
tools which the men and women of Europe had been using 
for thousands of years. 

The Steam Engine 

But about this very time the world suddenly made a great 
leap forward in the invention of tools. Many of the new tools 
were invented in America, but much of the progress in tool¬ 
making began in the year 1769, when James Watt in Eng¬ 
land invented the steam engine. 

Before the time of the steam engine, people had found ways 
of using the power of animals, of fire, of wind, and of falling 
water to help them with their tools. The steam engine used 
the power of steam to help man in his work. 

When the water in our teakettles is heated, it changes to 
steam. As the steam needs more room than water, it comes 
out through the spout. If we seal the spout, the force of the 
steam will explode the kettle. Steam seeking escape from a 
closed chamber has much force. In the first successful 
steam engine, you may remember, the force of the escaping 
steam was used to work a pump which pumped water out of 
a coal mine. 





226 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


Soon other men used the steam engine to turn the wheels 
of the new spinning machines and the new looms. They 
used steam power to turn the wheels of the new sewing 
machines. Steam engines turned the paddle wheels or the 
propellers on ships. Steam engines turned the wheels of 
railroad locomotives. 

The city factories, working with steam engines, could make 
things more quickly than people working at home with hand 
tools; so more and more work was done in factories, and the 
cities grew. 

The railroads and the steamships could carry great cargoes. 
For this reason more and more men went into the distant 
wilderness to clear large farms for planting and for raising 
live stock. They were sure that they could ship their farm 
goods to the growing cities. 

To feed the great number of people in the cities, the 
farmers on the large farms needed new tools. Soon men in¬ 
vented machine plows, harrows, drills, reapers, binders, and 
threshers. The farmers ran some of these machines with 
steam engines. 

How Electricity Increased Man’s Power 

While some men were making tools which could be worked 
by steam power, other men were learning to put a new force 
to work for them. 

For a long time a few men had been experimenting with 
a strange force called electricity. Then one day Benjamin 
Franklin, one of the Americans who had helped the United 





USING TOOLS TO INCREASE POWER 227 



Electric Power Can Be Led through Copper Wire to 
a City a Hundred Miles Away. 












228 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


States to become a free nation, helped the men who were 
studying electricity. He proved by an experiment that 
electricity and lightning are one. His experiment made in¬ 
ventors eager to learn how they could use this powerful force 
to work for men. The inventors learned how to make electric 
batteries. They learned how to use copper wire to carry 
electric currents. They learned how to send messages 
through copper wires. They invented ways by which electric 
current can give us light and heat. They found a way of 
changing the force of falling water into electric power. 

To make electric power from water power they built power 
houses near waterfalls. There is one such power house near 
Niagara Falls, in western New York State. In a power 
house the great mass of falling water turns huge wheels. As 
the wheels turn, they set other wheels turning inside a 
dynamo. This dynamo is filled with magnets and with 
copper wires, arranged in such a way that the turning of the 
dynamo wheels charges the wires with electric power. 

Water power, of course, is used near waterfalls. But the 
electric power made from water power is different. Electric 
power can be led through copper wire to light a city a hundred 
miles away, or to turn the wheels of factories even farther 
away. At present men have found that it is not profitable 
to carry electric current more than three hundred miles. 

The Gasoline and Fuel-Oil Engines 

After the discovery of electric power, men learned how to 
make gasoline motors. They found that they could make a 





USING TOOLS TO INCREASE POWER 229 


small engine in which gasoline would spray into a chamber 
between two wires. Here a small electric spark would cause 
an explosion. The exploding gas seeks escape, just as the 
steam in the steam engine seeks escape. The escaping gas 
is used to turn the wheels of the motor. 

It was the gasoline engine which made possible the auto¬ 
mobile, the tractor, the airplane. Today, some ships, trains, 
and factories use an oil called fuel oil for their engines. This 
fuel oil and gasoline are both made from the oil called petro¬ 
leum. 

How the New Tools Have Changed 
Man’s Way of Living 

So we see that since 1767 the steam engine, electric power, 
the gasoline engine, and the fuel-oil engine were invented. 
During this same time men invented new factory machinery. 
They also invented new machinery for flour and lumber 
mills, new mining machinery, new printing presses. Many 
of these machines are run by steam or electric power. 

With all the new tools and the engines which run them, 
man has added to his strength many times over. 

The new tools worked by the new engines have changed 
people's ways of working, both on the farms and in the cities. 
They have also changed ways of living. The world in which 
we live today is so different from the world of Benjamin 
Franklin's day that, if he could visit us, we should have to 
explain to him most of our tools and our ways of doing 
things. He would see a world in which the new tools worked 
by the new engines make it possible for many people to 



230 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


enjoy comforts and luxuries which kings in his day did not 
even imagine to be possible. 

Something to Do 

If you have read this chapter carefully, you will be able to 
write on the blank line in the sentences below, the word or words 
which make these statements correct. If you cannot fill these 
blanks correctly, read the chapter again. 

1. In ancient times the chief occupations of men were_ 

and _ 

2. Their tools were made of___,_, or_ 

3. As man improved his ways of doing things, he made his 

tools of_,_,_, and_ 

4. Before the time of the steam engine, man used the power 

of_, of_, of_, and of_ 

5. The first steam engine was invented by_in 

the year__lived in_ 

6. An American later discovered a new power called_ 

His name was_ 

7. Electric power is often made from_power. 

8. Changes in our ways of living have come about because 

man is an_ 



























Chapter 29 


COPPER, IRON, STEEL, COAL, AND OIL 
MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 

The time, long, long ago, when people used stone for tools 
is called the Stone Age. This was followed by the Copper Age^ 
when people used copper tools. The Bronze Age began when 
workers learned to make bronze by melting copper and tin 
together. When men learned to make tools of iron, the 
Iron Age began. The Iron Age lasted thousands of years. 
Then, about seventy-five years ago, when men found a way 
of making steel in great quantities and at little cost, there 
came our own age, the Age of Steel. 

Although steel is used for making many of our tools, 
machines, and engines, we must not forget that without 
copper, coal, and oil, all our giant machinery and swift¬ 
running engines would be useless. 

How then do we get these materials? Copper, coal, and 
oil, and the iron from which steel is made, are all obtained 
from the earth. Copper, coal, and iron are obtained from 
mines in the earth. Oil is obtained from wells in the earth. 

The Copper Age and Modern Copper Mining 

First let us consider copper. No one knows when or where 
copper was first used. It was probably discovered quite by 
accident. 


231 


232 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


Perhaps some Stone Age man found that a lump of this 
reddish metal made a better weapon than a stone. He next 
discovered that, when he pounded a lump of it, it did not 
break, but only flattened out. Then he began to hammer one 
side of it into a sharp edge and had a copper tool which was 
very strong and lasting. He could now get his food more 
easily. He began to mine the metal from open pits. 

It was probably by accident, too, that men learned to use 
fire to smelt the pure copper from its ore. Perhaps some 
traveler found strange, glittering lumps in the ashes of his 
campfire. Instead of breaking when struck, these lumps were 
soft and dented. They had a reddish gleam. They could be 
hammered easily when cold. 

After discovering that this metal would melt, men could 
see that the melted mass took the shape of the hollow in 
which it was found. This suggested an easier way to shape 
tools than by hammering. 

Later men learned to mix tin with copper to make bronze, 
which was still stronger than copper. Much later they mixed 
copper and zinc to make brass. Brass has been known less 
than half as long as bronze. 

From the copper articles which have been dug up and from 
a few records in writing and in pictures we know that such 
ancient peoples as the Chinese, the Egyptians, and the 
Hindus used copper as early as several thousand years be¬ 
fore the time of Christ. The Bible tells us of Tubal Cain, 
who taught people to work in copper. 

The Egyptians probably used copper for beads and pins 





MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 233 


long before they made tools of it. There is still preserved a 
copper button found in an Egyptian tomb which dates back 
to 4400 B.c. 

One of the earliest tools of the Egyptians was a long cop¬ 
per saw with which the great blocks of stone for some of 
the pyramids were cut. 

There were coppersmiths, or copper workers, in ancient 
Egypt who carried on a regular business and supplied orders. 
There are still to be seen crude pictures of their furnaces 
and bellows. 

Copper pipes have been found in an Egyptian temple — 
a plumbing system thousands of years old! Copper pipes 
carried water to the king’s palace. Not long ago a piece of 
copper pipe in good condition was dug up near the tomb of 
a king. It is estimated to be at least 5400 years old. 

If you could have visited an ancient Egyptian market, you 
would have seen people using heavy copper rings instead of 
money. One important use of copper today is for coins. 
Every coin we use, even a gold piece, contains some copper 
to make it wear longer. The Egyptians grew very wealthy 
from their trade in metals. Most of their copper came from 
the peninsula of Sinai, which is at the northern end of the 
Red Sea. 

There are records preserved which tell us that the Chinese 
early used copper. They mined coal to get fuel to smelt the 
copper. They soon became skilled in working bronze, for 
their tin and copper mines and their coal mines were near 
one another. Their bronze vessels inlaid with gold and sil¬ 
ver are beautiful. 




234 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


When our country was discovered, the white men found 
the Indians using copper necklaces, bracelets of copper beads, 
copper spears and arrowheads, and copper knives. They 
found the mines from which the Indians had been taking 
copper. They found some of the Indian mining tools. In 
the open mines they found huge lumps of copper which the 
Indians had not been able to take out. 

One huge lump, weighing as much as four tons, the Indians 
had managed to move about two miles from the mine. 
There it stayed for years until, in 1843, it was moved to 
Washington and placed in the National Museum. 

The copper region south of Lake Superior furnished most 
of the copper the Indians used. This region still furnishes 
large quantities of copper. 

Wherever men find signs of large deposits of copper, they 
sink shafts and tunnels into the earth. When a miner goes 
to work, he enters a cage which lowers him through the 
shaft to his working level. Down the timbered shaft he 
goes, several thousand feet a minute, perhaps nearly a mile 
below the surface of the earth. 

Once in the mine some men work to blast the rock. Others 
load the broken-up ore on ore cars. At the different levels 
small railways haul the cars to the shafts. The copper ore 
is then hoisted to the top and sent to be smelted. Much of 
the copper comes out as ore, mixed with rock, soil, and other 
impurities. 

Some of these mines are like great underground office 
buildings, with their many workers, many floors, their cages 





MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 235 


to carry men and freight, their telephone systems, their 
ventilating systems, their fire protection. 

If the ore lies very near the surface or if there is a hill of 
copper, as sometimes happens, 'open mining' is used; that 
is, the ore is removed in the open by steam shovels and rail¬ 
roads. Around such mines have grown up small cities where 
smelting and sometimes manufacturing of copper is done. 

After the ore is melted down in furnaces, the pure molten 
copper is cast into ingots, or bars, which are cooled. Many 
of these ingots are sent to factories where workers mix the 
copper with tin and zinc to make bronze and brass fixtures. 
Much copper is sent to the wire mills, where machines draw 
it out into the fine wire which is used to carry electric cur¬ 
rent. 

Today, the world over, there are millions of miles of cop¬ 
per wire which help to transmit messages, light cities, and 
turn the wheels of electric engines. 

Next to iron and steel, copper is the most useful metal 
today. However, aluminum can be drawn out into wire to 
transmit electricity and is being developed for use in some 
places. 

It is said that one piece of telephone cable only two and 
one-half inches across may contain twelve hundred pairs of 
copper wires. 

In our homes copper is serving us every hour in the day. 
Because of it, we can have electric stoves and toasters, 
washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric fans, and other 
appliances which make work easier and our lives more 




236 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


comfortable. Many homes are roofed with copper and 
screened with copper. The best hardware for the home, as 
door knobs and locks, is made largely of copper. So is the 
best plumbing. 

We can see that copper is a valuable servant of man in 
doing the work of the world. Imagine what would happen 
if the supply of copper should suddenly be used up. What 
would happen to transportation? How could people com¬ 
municate with each other easily? What changes would 
have to be made in your homes? 

The Story of Iron and Steel 

In Chapter 22 you read something of the early history of 
iron. 

Iron, like copper, is obtained from mines in the earth. 
Like copper, the iron ore is an ore which must be purified by 
fire. When the ore comes from the mine, ships and trains 
carry it to the iron mills or the steel mills. 

Inside the iron mills, great metal cups, or crucibles, hold¬ 
ing tons of iron ore, glide on pulleys along overhead cables to 
the furnaces. Here blasts of hot air and gas are forced 
through the crucibles to melt the iron in the ore. The white- 
hot liquid iron is then poured into large molds and allowed 
to cool. The cooled ingots, called pig iron, can be used for 
making iron tools of any shape or size, or they can be sent 
to the steel mills to be made into steel. 

In the steel mills, the iron ingots are once again melted 
down, and limestone and other minerals are added to the 






MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 237 


molten iron. Then crucibles of this white-hot liquid mix¬ 
ture are carried along cables to the blast furnace where a 
draft of hot air is again forced through the metal. Great 
flames, orange, blue, yellow, and purple shoot out of the 
crucible. The men watch the flames because the colors tell 
them when the impurities have been burned away. So 
liquid iron becomes liquid steel. 

We have read something of this in Chapter 22 in the story 
of building materials. There we are told only how the liquid 
steel rolled into steel beams and girders is used in building 
tall houses. But this is only one of the uses of steel. 

Steel is used in the building of bridges, which, swinging 
across rivers and over deep mountain chasms, help to carry 
trains on their way. Heavy steam locomotives are made of 
steel. Steel machinery made the clothes and tools which 
the train is carrying from the cities to the farms. Steel 
harvesters gathered the wheat which the trains are carrying 
to feed the cities. The ships which bring us sugar, fruits, 
spices, from the far ends of the earth are run by steel engines. 

Steel! Steel! Steel! How many tasks steel tools and 
engines with their tireless bodies and their tireless arms 
perform for us! 

Many engines are run by electric power, which is made 
from water'power; other machines and engines must have 
either coal or oil for fuel. The heat which is in these fuels 
helps to drive our steam engines, our oil engines, our gas 
engines. 





238 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


The Story of Coal 

Coal is obtained from the earth by mining. The coal in 
the earth is really the remains of forests and ferns, buried 
ages ago. Through countless years the buried plants, packed 
tight by the weight above them, change to the hard black 
stone which we call coal. 

This same process is going on today in some of our swamps 
and peat bogs. Of course, the coal now being formed is 
made of the remains of different plants from those that made 
the coal we are burning. There are no fernlike trees in our 
country today, as there were when our coal was made. 
Perhaps the coal beds now being formed will show prints 
of our hardwood and evergreen trees. 

In coal the heat which the plants of long ago gathered 
from the sun is stored in less space than in wood. A small 
pail full of coal will give more heat than a great log of wood. 
For this reason, since about one hundred years ago, people 
have been using coal rather than wood as a fuel for furnaces 
and engines. 

Coal, like the other minerals we have studied, has had a 
long and interesting history. Very early, man discovered 
that this black ‘rock’ would burn. Flint axes have been 
found buried in coal mines in England. The Romans found 
the Britons burning ‘black stones.’ You have learned 
earlier in this chapter that the Chinese used coal to smelt 
their copper. They also used it to bake their porcelain. 

There are records of grants of land for coal-digging in 




MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 239 


England as early as the thirteenth century. Coal was being 
sent to London by ship, and even then there were complaints 
about the smoke! For a time, the use of coal was forbidden 
in England. It was not until England had used up most of 
her forests, by burning charcoal, that coal began to be burned 
in large quantities. 

As early as 1679, soft coal was reported by Father Henne¬ 
pin when he was exploring in what is now Illinois. Later, 
anthracite, or hard coal, was discovered. People thought it 
was too hard to burn, and some of it was cracked up and 
used for roads. It was a long time before people began to 
realize its value. When the railroads and steamboats came, 
the coal industry began to grow. 

In our country there are great deposits of hard coal in 
mines in the eastern part of the state of Pennsylvania. 
There are deposits of soft coal in many parts of the country. 

Where coal is found in mountains, tunnels are dug side¬ 
ways into the mountain walls. More often, the miners must 
sink shafts down into the earth. Then at different levels, 
they dig horizontal tunnels which are like underground roads 
branching off from the shafts. Heavy beams keep the tun¬ 
nels from caving in. 

In some mines there are miles of these underground 
tunnels. To reach them, men enter a cage at the top of the 
shaft. A cable lowers the cage to the level on which the 
men work. They get out into the dark tunnel. 

To light their way, they have lamps attached to their caps. 
This leaves their arms free to work. The lamps are safety 







240 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


lamps. No match or open flame must be carried here be¬ 
cause in the mines there is a gas called fire damp which may 
explode. 

The men find their way to the mass of coal which they 
must mine. They then drill holes into the rock. They 
place a cartridge in each of these holes. By means of 
fuses, they explode the cartridges, thus breaking loose coal 
and rock. 

Helpers load the loosened coal on to carts. Pushed by 
hand, drawn by mules or by engines, the carts carry their 
loads to shafts through which the coal is sent up out of the 
mine. 

Some coal is removed by steam shovel and open mining, 
just as copper is. Open mining is not so hard nor so danger¬ 
ous as underground mining and requires fewer men. 

When the coal is sorted according to size and separated 
from rock and stone, it is ready to be sent to factories, mills, 
and homes. 

More coal is transported by rail than in any other way. 
Most of the coal for New England, except near the ocean, 
comes by rail. On the Great Lakes, coal is sent in whaleback 
steamers. On the Ohio, it is shipped by barge or flatboat. 

Since the greatest amount of coal is shipped north to our 
great manufacturing cities, it is important that it be shipped 
before winter sets in. For during the winter months many 
rivers are frozen, so that boats cannot travel on them, and 
snow hinders the movement of freight on railroads. 

There are different kinds of coal, depending on the kind of 




MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 241 


plants composing it, the length of time it has been forming, 
and the amount of pressure it has had. 

Brown coal, or lignite, is the nearest to peat. It is like 
wood and breaks up easily. It will not furnish the heat that 
other coals do. 

Soft, or bituminous, coal, so valuable in manufacturing, 
has been longer in forming and has had greater pressure. It 
furnishes great heat and burns with a great deal of smoke. 
It takes more than a ton of soft coal to smelt a ton of iron 
ore and more than four tons to produce one ton of steel. 

The hardest coal is the anthracite of the eastern states. It 
is the best coal for heat in the home, because it is clean and 
burns well with little or no smoke. 

Any kind of coal can be used for locomotive fuel. Steam¬ 
ships need coal which gives great heat but is light and is not 
bulky. Practically any kind of coal, even low-grade brown 
coal, can be used for steam and power. 

In large cities, coal is used to make gas, which is stored in 
tanks and then carried by underground pipes to furnish gas 
light or to burn in gas stoves. People burn coal in furnaces 
to heat their homes. Coal is used for making dyes to color 
our cotton, linen, silk, and wool. It is used to make benzine, 
which dry-cleans our clothes. Coal is used to make am¬ 
monia, which is used to make artificial ice. 

All these uses of coal are important, but most important 
of all is its use as the fuel which changes water to steam and 
so drives the steam engines which are working for us day 
and night. 







242 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


The Story of Oil 

Coal gives oar engines power. Oil furnishes not only 
power, but also the needed material to prevent friction in 
all sorts of engines and machinery. 

The gasoline which drives our swift automobiles and air¬ 
planes, the fuel oil which runs many engines, the lubricating 
oil which makes the wheels of engines turn more easily, all 
come from petroleum. 

Petroleum means ‘rock oil.’ This oil, formed from plants 
and animals which lived on the earth ages ago, is found stored 
up in porous rock, like water in a sponge. 

Petroleum has been known to man for thousands of years. 
Long ago people in different lands saw pools of a sticky sub¬ 
stance which burned when it was thrown upon a fire. This 
was oil which had oozed up from its rocky underground 
home. 

Ancient writers mention the use of oil for medicine. This 
seems to have been its first use. Marco Polo records that a 
hundred ships could be filled at a time with oil from the lake 
at Baku, that it was not good to eat, but that it was good to 
burn and to cure the sore backs of camels. 

The Chinese drilled oil wells before the time of Christ. 
The Greeks used oil to frighten their enemies, for it could 
burn on water. The Egyptians used it for pitch and mortar 
and also in preparing mummies. They regarded the places 
where oil was found as holy. There is an account of the oil 
springs of Sicily where petroleum was used in lamps. 





MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 243 


One of the first Greek historians, Herodotus, has left an 
account of how he had seen oil obtained. It was swabbed 
up from the lake with a branch of myrtle. A pole was let 
down into the water, with a bunch of myrtle tied to one end. 

In our country there were places where the Indians saw oil 
floating on the surface of creeks or rivers. This, too, had 
oozed from the earth up into the streams. When the white 
people came to this country, they used some of this oil as a 
medicine. They believed it would cure many illnesses; they 
even believed it would cure baldness. 

The settlers collected petroleum from the surface of the 
water with woolen cloths in much the same way that He¬ 
rodotus tells about. 

Sometimes oil was regarded as a nuisance. When drilling 
. for salt, the settlers often got oil with it. This spoiled their 
salt. 

One of the places where people found oil floating on water 
was Oil Creek in Pennsylvania; and it was near this place 
that a man named Colonel Drake, digging into the earth, 
struck the world’s first oil well about sixty feet down. As 
this oil sold for forty dollars a barrel, hundreds of other men 
began drilling wells for miles and miles around Drake’s well. 
Many of these men struck oil, and from that day to this 
some of the wells in Pennsylvania are still pumping up oil. 
Since that time oil has been found in many other parts 
of the United States. 

Once people learned ways by which they could get petro¬ 
leum easily, they looked for new ways in which petroleum 




244 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


could be used. Before long they found marvelous uses 
for it. 

Petroleum is not used as it comes from the earth. It is 
first purified in refineries. In the refineries, petroleum is 
heated in huge metal-lined kettles which are called stills. 
As the oil becomes hot, it gives off gases. At one temperature 
it gives off one gas. At higher temperatures it gives off other 
gases. Pipes leading from the still carry these gases to cool 
tanks, called condensers. Here the cold changes the gases 
to liquids. In one condenser the gas obtained at another 
temperature changes to gasoline. In the refineries, lubri¬ 
cating oil and a heavy fuel oil are also made from petroleum. 

Kerosene oil, which is also made from petroleum, proved a 
boon to farmers who could not get either gas or electric light 
for their homes. 

As a fuel, gasoline made possible the automobile and the 
airplane. Without this liquid fuel, which burns drop by 
drop, the automobile and the airplane would have been im¬ 
possible. Before the value of this product of petroleum was 
known, gasoline was regarded as a waste product; only 
kerosene was considered valuable. 

The lubricating oil is used to grease engines so as to reduce 
friction between the parts. Without lubricating oil, our 
machines and engines could not run nearly so fast. In fact, 
the friction would soon wear out the parts; the heat from 
the friction would ruin the engine. 

Now people are using fuel oil, very much as coal is used, 
to run engines on railroads, on steamships, and in factories. 



MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 245 


Fuel oil can be sent for long distances more easily than coal. 
It is easier to load a ship with fuel oil. It is easier to feed a 
boiler oil than to feed it coal. 

With these uses for kerosene, gasoline, lubricating oil, and 
fuel oil, people have been wanting more petroleum and more 
petroleum and still more petroleum. 

For tens of years men have been searching all over the 
United States and all through the rest of the world for signs 
of oil fields. These men have found great oil fields in many 
parts of this country outside of Pennsylvania. California, 
Oklahoma, Texas, all help to give us much of our oil. Mexico 
has great oil fields. So has Russia. Still the search for new 
oil fields goes on. 

Where the signs seem to be right, men drill into the earth. 
They begin by building a huge derrick. From this derrick 
they hang their drill, which may weigh a ton. A steam 
engine works the drill, which pounds its weight away down 
through rock and soil a hundred feet, a thousand feet, some¬ 
times two thousand feet, and even more. 

Drilling an oil well is very costly. The people who have 
risked their money to pay for the drilling wait for word. 
Will the drillers ‘ strike oil ’ or not? Often they do not. The 
earth below is dry, and all the money spent in drilling is then 
lost. On the other hand, drillers sometimes strike such a 
good well that the oil comes gushing up through the pipe 
and spouts away up into the air, a stream of black, flowing 
oil which brings gold to the men who own it. 

But today oil is carried through pipe lines to huge tanks 




246 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


where it is stored. These pipe lines are laid undei the 
earth. 

From the storage tanks other pipe lines carry the oil for 
hundreds or even thousands of miles to the oil refineries. 
These great trunk lines can transport large amounts of oil 
more cheaply than it can be carried by rail. Sending a 
barrel of oil by pipe line costs from four to ten cents per 
hundred miles. 

Oil is also carried by tank cars, by tank ships, and by motor 
trucks. Tank ships move great volumes of oil from the Cali¬ 
fornia oil fields to the eastern refineries. 

California is noted for the size and number of its oil wells. 
Many of the wells are over a mile deep. 

In this country alone, billions of gallons of petroleum are 
used each year, and billions of gallons will be used in each 
year to come. No wonder the great nations of the world 
are all eager to make sure that their people will not lack oil 
for a long time in the future. 

Our modern world, you see, would be impossible without 
the minerals we have been studying about in this chapter. 

Things to Do 

1. Make a list of all the useful metals mentioned in this 
chapter. 

2. After you have made a list of the metals, make a list of 
the things which are made from each of them. 

3. Make a list of the minerals mentioned in this chapter. 

4. Now list the uses we make of these minerals. 

5. Coal has a very interesting story. Tell it to your class 





MATERIALS THAT MAKE TOOLS POSSIBLE 247 


or write it in your notebook. Some of the things you will want 
to tell in your story are how it is formed, where it is found, 
how many kinds there are, how it is mined, and what it is used 
for. 

6. Write a story describing the work of a coal-miner. 

7. On an outline map of the United States, mark out, in 
some way, the coal regions. 

8. Be sure you know the meaning of the word by-product; 
then find in the chapter all the by-products of coal. 

9. Tell what these by-products of coal are used for. 




Chapter 30 
BOOKS AS TOOLS 

When you think of tools, you probably think of hammers, 
saws, hatchets, knives, and many other things which you use 
with your hands to help you do some kind of work. 

You hardly think of books as tools. But books are tools, 
because they help you in finding out so many things that 
you need to know. And the more you know, the better you 
are able to think. If you had no books, you never could 
know anything about the important things that have hap¬ 
pened in the past. You could not know so much as you do 
about other places and peoples. You would have no inter¬ 
esting stories to read when you want to sit quietly in your 
homes. You could not enjoy reading about people and 
events in far-away places. 

Tablets, Papyrus, Parchment, and Paper 

The story of books is an interesting one. Long before 
printing was invented or paper was made, men kept records 
of events on clay tablets. The clay tablets of Babylonia and 
Assyria were collected into libraries and might be called 
ancient books. 

As long ago as 2500 years before Christ, which was later 

than these ancient tablets, the Egyptians preserved their 

248 


BOOKS AS TOOLS 


249 


sacred records on a papyrus roll. This roll had eighteen 
columns of picture writing and is still preserved in the 
museum called the Louvre, in Paris, France. 

As long as papyrus was in use, books were made in the 
form of scrolls, or rolls wound around a stick. The writing 
was arranged in narrow columns across the scroll, very 
much like the columns of a newspaper today, except that 
in these ancient times picture writing was used. 

Papyrus was made of the bark of a plant, pressed into a 
flat piece of fiber. This was hard to secure and some other 
kind of material had to be found. An ancient king, living 
about two hundred years before Christ, began to study ways 
of improving the skins of sheep and calves for writing pur¬ 
poses. These skins were called parchments and were in use 
for eight hundred years. 

In the tenth century before Christ men began to make a 
writing material from a pulp of linen rags. This began in 
China. Many centuries after the Chinese discovered a way 
of making paper, paper mills were set up in Europe and the 
use of paper began to spread. 

The invention of printing, which you will read about in a 
moment, led to an increase in the making of linen paper. 
When printing became common, paper was made from wood 
pulp. Pulp paper is much cheaper than linen paper, but does 
not last nearly so long. 




250 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


The Early, Hand-Made Books Were Beautiful 
but Costly 

Books were originally sacred writings or records of sacred 
events and so belonged to the churches. For a long time 
men continued to write and copy books on scrolls, but there 
came a time when men made books in the same form as this 
book. 

Books became very elaborate and beautiful. Some of 
them were bound in gold and set with precious stones, and 
often they had beautiful illustrations of fine engravings 
which made them lovely picture books. 

During the Middle Ages the learned men copied the writ¬ 
ings of men who had lived centuries before them. These 
books were written by hand and they were very expensive. 
It took a long time to make them. No one except the very 
rich and learned people could afford to buy them. The 
poorer people never even saw them. 

Since there were few books, no one except the learned class 
knew how to read. 


The Printed Book 

Then came the printed book, which opened the art of 
reading and book learning to the people. The craft, called 
letter-printing, which was done on wooden blocks, was also 
discovered by the Chinese. They were the first printers as 
well as the first paper-makers. The oldest known printed 
book was found in China. It has this statement written 



BOOKS AS TOOLS 


251 


upon it, “Printed on May 11, 868, by Wong Chilk for free 
distribution, in order in deep reverence to perpetuate the 
memory of his parents/’ You see in those ancient days 
books were dedicated to some honored person, just as we 
sometimes dedicate them today. 

Printing from movable type was first done by Pi Shing in 
China in the years 1041 to 1049. 

No one knows when or where in Europe printing from 
movable type began. It is supposed it happened about 1440, 
but there are many different stories told about this invention. 
'Germany, Holland, France, and Italy each claims it. 

But it is believed that Holland has the honor. In Haarlem, 
in Holland, a man named Coster was printing from movable 
type before 1446, and Johann Gutenberg was printing at 
Mainz in Germany about the same time. There were 
printers in Italy in 1465, and Caxton set up his press in 
England in 1477. 

The pages of the earliest books were printed to look like 
the hand-copied manuscripts, for the printers did not want 
their invention discovered. The Bible was among the first 
books to be printed. There were three hundred copies made 
during those early times; only forty of them are known to 
be in existence now. The others must have been lost or 
destroyed centuries ago. 

What Printing Means to Us 

Through the centuries many improvements in methods of 
printing by machinery have been made. 





252 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 


Newspapers can be printed so quickly that people all over 
the world can have daily newspapers to read. And many 
publishers of newspapers print both a morning and an eve¬ 
ning paper. Frequently when some important event takes 
place extra editions of newspapers are printed. You have 
heard the newsboys selling these extras in the streets of 
your own town or city. 

So it is with magazines and books. Nowadays there are 
so many magazines printed every month, and so many books 
are published, that no one could possibly read them all. It 
is a contrast, indeed, to conditions a few centuries ago when 
few people knew how to read because there was almost noth¬ 
ing to read. Now with so much to read, there are very few 
people in civilized countries who cannot read. And those 
who love to read have a hard time to decide what of the mass 
of reading material they will read. 

You see what the invention of printing has done for us. 
Until books were printed, not only did very few people 
know how to read, but there were not even any schools for 
the children of the working classes. There were no school¬ 
books, no magazines, and no newspapers. There was no way 
for man to preserve the knowledge of the past so that all 
could learn from it, as we can today. There was no way for 
news to spread so that all might know about things that 
were happening in other places. 

Books help us in many ways. We read them when we 
want to be entertained in our leisure hours. We go to them 
when we want to learn something that we could not find out 
in any other way. 





BOOKS AS TOOLS 


253 


Things to Do 

If you have read the chapter carefully, you can tell what 
words should be added in the blank spaces to make these state¬ 
ments correct. 

1. The earliest books were made in the form of_ 

2. Printing on wooden blocks was invented by the_ 

3. The oldest known printed book was found in_ 

4. Printing from letters cut on a wooden block was first in¬ 
vented by a_ 

5. The first printing press was invented by_in 

the year_ 

6. Until books were printed, few people__ 


7. Make a list of all the ways books are a help to you. 

8. Make a list of the books you have enjoyed reading. 

9. If you live near an art museum and there is a collection 
of old books there, your class might arrange to go to see them. 














254 TOOLS THAT HELP IN WORLD’S WORK 





































CHILDREN’S REFERENCE LIST 

Bachman, Frank P. Great Inventors and Their Inventions. 

New York, American Book Company. 

Bassett, Sara Ware. The Story of Lumber; The Story of 
Leather; The Story of Silk; The Story of Sugar; The Story 
of Wool (Industry Series). Philadelphia, Penn Publishing 
Company. 

A series of stories dealing with the life and process involved in different 
industries. 

Bridges, T. C. The Young Folks' Book of Invention. Boston, 
Little, Brown and Company. 

Brooks, Eugene C. The Story of Cotton. Chicago, Rand 
McNally and Company. 

Claxton, William J. Rambles Among Our Industries. Lon¬ 
don, Blackie & Son Limited. 

An excellent series of little English books describing various industries and 
modes of travel. Those especially recommended are Wool and the Weaver, 
Coal and the Miner; The Airman and his Craft; Silk and the Silk Worker. 

Curtis, Alice Turner. The Story of Cotton (Industry Series). 

Philadelphia, Penn Publishing Company. 

Engleman, F. E., and Salmon, Julia. Airways. Boston, 
D. C. Heath and Company. 

Geer, William C. The Reign of Rubber. New York, Century 
Company. 

Hill, Henry Chase. The New Wonder Book of Knowledge 
(Edited and revised by Will H. Johnston). Philadelphia, 
John C. Winston Company. 

Holbrook, Florence. Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers, 
Boston, D. C. Heath and Company. 

James, Harlean. The Building of Cities. New York, The 
Macmillan Company. 

Nida, William L. and Stella H. Makers of Progress. Boston, 
D. C. Heath and Company. 

255 


256 


CHILDREN’S REFERENCE LIST 


Reynolds, Minnie J. How Man Conquered Nature. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 

Samuel, Elizabeth I. The Story of Iron (Industry Series). 
Philadelphia, Penn Publishing Company. 

Snedden, Genevra Sisson. Docas, The Indian Boy of Santa 
Clara. Boston, D. C. Heath and Company. 

Stone, Gertrude L., and Fickett, M. Grace. Famous Days 
in the Century of Invention. Boston, D. C. Heath and Com- 
pany. 

Tappan, Eva March. Diggers in the Earth; Makers of 
Many Things; Modern Triumphs (Vol. XIV of The Chil¬ 
dren’s Hour); Travelers and Traveling. Boston, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 

Turpin, Edna. Cotton. New York, American Book Company. 




TEACHERS’ REFERENCE LIST 


Bond, A. Russell. Pick, Shovel, and Pluck. New York, 
Scientific American Publishing Company. 

Cressy, Edward. Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth 
Century. New York, E. P. Dutton and Company. 

Crissey, Forrest. The Story of Foods. New York, Rand 
McNally and Company. 

Fraser, Chelsea C. Secrets of the Earth. New York, T. Y. 
Crowell Company. 

Chapters 1 and 2 describe the mining of coal, iron ore, and other important 
minerals. 

Huntington, Ellsworth, and Cushing, S. W. Modern 
Business Geography. Yonkers, New York, World Book 
Company. 

Kaempffert, Waldemar B. (editor). A Popular History of 
American Invention, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons. 
Keir, Robert Malcolm. The March of Commerce (Vol. IV) 
and The Epic of Industry (Vol. V) of The Pageant of America. 
New Haven, Yale University Press. 

Marshall, Leon C. The Story of Human Progress. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 

Pitkin, Walter B., and Hughes, Harold F. Seeing America. 
Book I, Farm and Field; Book 2, Mill and Factory. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 

Smith, Joseph Russell. The Story of Iron and Steel. New 
York, D. Appleton and Company. 

Van Metre, T. W. Trains, Tracks, and Travel. New York, 
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Company. 


257 


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